Henry David Thoreau Quotations: LIFE
We live but a fraction of our life.—Journal, 13 June 1851
We live too fast and coarsely, just as we eat too fast, and do not know the true savor of our food.—Journal, 28 December 1852
We made many a “bran new” theory of life over a thin dish of gruel, which combined the advantages of conviviality with the clear-headedness which philosophy requires.—Walden
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
We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.—Walden
What avails it that another loves you, if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
What institutions of man can survive a morning experience?—Journal, 24 May 1851
What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love?—Journal, 30 April 1851
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
