Henry David Thoreau Quotations: LIFE
Only lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Our life without love is coke and ashes.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Our mother's faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Painted by the frosts, some a uniform clear bright yellow, or red, or crimson, as if their spheres had regularly revolved, and enjoyed the influence of the sun on all sides alike,—some with the faintest pink blush imaginable,—some brindled with deep red streaks like a cow, or with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running regularly from the stem-dimple to the blossom end, like meridional lines, on a straw-colored ground,—some touched with a greenish rust, like a fine lichen, here and there, with crimson blotches or eyes more or less confluent and fiery when wet,—and others gnarly, and freckled or peppered all over on the stem side with fine crimson spots on a white ground, as if accidentally sprinkled from the brush of Him who paints the autumn leaves.—"Wild Apples"
Perhaps an instinct survives through the intensest actual love, which prevents entire abandonment and devotion, and makes the most ardent lover a little reserved. It is the anticipation of change.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 23 September 1852
Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life, as a dog does his master's chaise. Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 27 March 1848
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.—Walden
Senses that take cognizance of outward things merely are of no avail. It matters not where or how far you travel? the farther commonly the worse? but how much alive you are.—Journal, 6 May 1854
So few habitually intoxicate themselves with music, so many with alcohol. I think, perchance, I may risk it, it will whet my senses so.—Journal, 16 October 1857
So is all change for the better, like birth and death which convulse the body.—"Resistance to Civil Government"
