Henry David Thoreau Quotations: LIFE
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.—Walden
I live in the perpetual verdure of the globe. I die in the annual decay of nature.—Journal, 8 March 1842
I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me.—Journal, 22 June 1853
I look out at my eyes, I come to my window, and feel and breathe the fresh air. It is a fact equally glorious with the most inward experience.—Journal, 23 August 1852
I love and worship myself with a love which absorbs my love for the world.—Journal, 18 July 1851
I love men with the same distinctions that I love women—as if my friend were of some third sex—some other or stranger and still my friend.—Journal, 5 May 1846
I love my friends very much, but I find that it is of no use to go to see them. I hate them commonly when I am near them. They belie themselves and deny me continually.—Journal, 16 November 1851
I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this.—Journal, 3 January 1853
I love that one with whom I sympathize.—Journal, 24 November 1858
I love to see a clear crystalline water flowing out of a swamp over white sand and decayed wood, spring-like.—Journal, 18 July 1852
