Henry David Thoreau Quotations: LIFE

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.—"Civil Disobedience" 

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I cannot but believe that acorns were intended to be the food of man. They are agreeable to the palate as the mother's milk to the babe.—Journal, 8 October 1851

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I catch an echo of the great strain of Friendship played somewhere, and feel compensated for months and years of commonplace.—Journal, 13 July 1857

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I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. —Walden

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I don't want to feel as if my life were a sojourn any longer. That philosophy cannot be true which so paints it. It is time now that I begin to live.—Journal, 25 December 1841

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I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!—"Wild Apples"

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I hate the present modes of living and getting a living.—Journal, 1 November 1855

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I have been sick so long that I have almost forgotten what it is to be well, yet I feel that it all respects only my envelope.—Thoreau to Daniel Ricketson, 15 August 1861

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I have heard of some who were 15 years a dying—a shiftless business for which neither gods nor mortals have any sympathy to spare.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

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I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.—Walden

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