Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Life & Death
We have the silver and the golden birch. This is like a fair, flaxen-haired sister of the dark-complexioned black birch, with golden ringlets. How lustily it takes hold of the swampy soil, and braces itself! And here flows a dark cherry-wood or wine-colored brook over the iron-red sands in the somber swamp,—swampy wine. In an undress, this tree. Ah, time will come when these will be all gone.—Journal, 4 January 1853
We live but a fraction of our life.—Journal, 13 June 1851
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in out soundest sleep.—Walden
What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority. The marines and the militia whose bodies were used lately were not men of sense nor of principle; in a high moral sense they were not men at all.—Journal, 9 June 1854
When heaven begins and the dead arise, no trumpet is blown; perhaps the south wind will blow. What if you or I be dead! God is alive still.—Journal, 13 March 1842
Who can see these cities and say that there is any life in them?—Journal, 24 September 1843
Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb—heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board—may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!—Walden
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.—Walden
You conquer fate by thought. If you think the fatal thought of men and institutions, you need never pull the trigger. The consequences of thinking inevitably follow.—Journal, 6 May 1858
