Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Past, Present, & Future
All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversÂ
And do we live but in the present? How broad a line is that?—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversÂ
Both for bodily and mental health, court the present.—Journal, 28 December 1852
For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found that, by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.—Walden
He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.—"Walking"
I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future.—Thoreau to H. G. O. Blake, 27 March 1848
I must live above all in the the present.—Journal, 7 January 1851
If we can forget, we have done somewhat; if we can remember, we have done somewhat. Let us remember this.—Journal, 7 July 1845
In reality, history fluctuates as the face of the landscape from morning to evening. What is of moment is its hue and color. Time hides no treasures; we want not its then, but its now. We do not complain that the mountains in the horizon are blue and indistinct; they are the more like the heavens.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat–Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions.—Walden
