Henry David Thoreau Quotations: LIFE
How is it that we are impelled to treat our old friends so ill when we obtain new ones?—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
How many things can you go away from? They see the comet from the northwest coast just as plainly as we do, and the same stars through its tail. Take the shortest way round and stay at home. A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its calyx, like an acorn in its cup. Here, of course, is all that you love, all that you expect, all that you are. Here is your bride elect, as close to you as she can be got. Here is all the best and all the worst you can imagine. What more do you want? Bear hereaway then! Foolish people imagine that what they imagine is somewhere else. That stuff is not made in any factory but your own.—Journal, 1 November 1858
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!—Journal, 19 August 1851
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse.—Walden
I am convinced that consistency is the secret of health.—Journal, 30 March 1842
I am more interested in the rosy cheek than I am to know what particular diet the maiden is fed on.—"Autumnal Tints"
I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone,—but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or a sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a humble-bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the northstar, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.—Walden
I am not afraid that I will exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is. I shall be sorry to remember that I was there, but noticed nothing remarkable—not so much as a prince in disguise; lived in the golden age as a hired man; visited Olympus even, but fell asleep after dinner, and did not hear the conversation of the gods.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 3 April 1850
I am surveying, instead of lecturing, at present. Let me have a skimming from your "pan of unwrinkled cream."—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 31 December 1856
I am too easily contented with a slight and almost animal happiness. My happiness is a good deal like that of the woodchucks.—Thoreau to H. G. O. Blake, 2 May 1848
