Henry David Thoreau Quotations: LIFE
Do not dissect a man till he is dead.—Journal, 14 September 1841
Do not tread on the heels of your experience. Be impressed without making a minute of it.—Journal, 23 July 1851
Do we detect the reason why we also did not die on the approach of spring?—Journal, 9 April 1856
Drink the wines not of your bottling but nature's bottling—not kept in goat skins or pig skins but the skins of a myriad fair berries.—Journal, 23 August 1853
Each reaching and aspiration is an instinct with which all nature consists and cooperates, and therefore it is not in vain. But alas! each relaxing and desperation is an instinct too. To be active, well, happy, implies rare courage. To be ready to fight in a duel or a battle implies desperation, or that you hold your life cheap.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 20 May 1860
Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine-trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.—The Maine Woods
Every important worker will report what life there is in him.—Journal, 6 May 1854
Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one life is the making room for another.—Journal, 24 October 1837
Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.—Walden
