Henry David Thoreau Quotations: RELATIONSHIPS
I wake up in the night to these higher levels of life, as to a day that begins to dawn, as if my intervening life had been a long night.—Journal, 13 July 1857
I want nothing new, if I can have but a tithe of the old secured to me. I will spurn all wealth beside. Think of the consummate folly of attempting to go away from here! When the constant endeavor should be to get nearer and nearer here!—Journal, 1 November 1858
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.—"Civil Disobedience"
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.—Walden
I would that I were worthy to be any man's Friend.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them.—Journal, 20 November 1857
If any ever went away disappointed or hungry from my house when they found me at home, they may depend upon it that I sympathized with them at least.—Walden
If I am not I, who will be?—Journal, 9 August 1841
If I had never thought of you as a friend, I could make much use of you as an acquaintance.—Journal, 31 January 1852
If my friend would take a quarter part the pains to show me himself that he does to show me a piece of roast beef, I should feel myself irresistibly invited.—Journal, 19 May 1856
