Henry David Thoreau Quotations: RELATIONSHIPS
Men should not go to New Zealand to write or think of Greece and Rome, nor more to New England. New earths, new themes expect us. Celebrate not the Garden of Eden, but your own.—Journal, 22 October 1857
My friend is cold and reserved because his love for me is waxing and not waning.—Journal, 20 March 1842
My Friend is not of some other race or family of men, but flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. He is my real brother.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
My friend is one whom I meet, who takes me for what I am. A stranger takes me for something else than what I am.—Journal, 23 October 1852
My greatest skill has been to want but little.—Journal, 19 July 1851
Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.—Walden
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.—Thoreau to Lidian Emerson, 22 May 1843
Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me as my own thoughts.—Journal, 10 July 1840
On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have hence forth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world. —Journal, 28 February 1840
One says to me, “I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see the country.” But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day’s wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your acquaintance altogether.—Walden
