Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Expectation
The truest account of heaven is the fairest & I will accept none which disappoints expectation. It is more glorious to expect a better, than to enjoy a worse.—Journal, 26 January 1852
There are some who never do or say anything, whose life merely excites expectation. Their excellence reaches no further than a gesture or mode of carrying themselves. They are a sash dangling from the waist, or a sculptured war-club over the shoulder. They are like fine-edged tools gradually becoming rusty in a shop-window. I like as well, if not better, to see a piece of iron or steel, out of which many such tools will be made, or the bush-whack in a man’s hand.—Journal, 10 March 1859
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 hope, what is expectation, but a seed-time whose harvest cannot fail, an irresistible expedition of the mind, at length to be victorious?—Journal, 20 February 1857
What is this heaven which they expect, if it is no better than they expect? Are they prepared for a better than they can now imagine?—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversÂ
With what infinite and unwearied expectation and proclamations the cocks usher in every dawn as if there had never been one before.—Journal, 16 March 1852
You are expected to do your duty, not in spite of everything but one, but in spite of everything.—Journal, 24 September 1859
