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The Thoreau Institute
at Walden Woods Library
Thoreau's
Life & Writings
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Henry D. Thoreau Mis-Quotations Pages
“There
is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it, and no
happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.”
It was written by
the Chinese author Lin Yutang (1895-1976) in his book, On the
Wisdom of America, published in 1950 by John Day. Yutang wrote
on page 446 in a paragraph about Thoreau:
Thoreau once thought the moon was larger over the United States
than over the Old World, the sky bluer, the stars brighter, the
thunder louder, the rivers longer, the mountains higher, the
prairies vaster, and he mystically concluded that the spirit of
man in America should be larger and more expansive "else why was
America discovered?" Thoreau was wrong, and Thoreau was right.
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon
it, and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it
yourself.
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