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Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Life - Page 3

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However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Courage, Mean
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.232, Xist Publishing

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Men, Want

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Garden, Clothes
Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.212, Cosimo, Inc.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational, Life, Health
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Thoreau on Nature: Sage Words on Finding Harmony with the Natural World”, p.10, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Summer, July
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.119, Courier Corporation

I saw a delicate flower had grown up two feet high between the horses' feet and the wheel-track. Which Dakin's and Maynard's wagons had Passed over many a time. An inch more to the right or left had sealed its fate, Or an inch higher. Yet it lived and flourished, As much as if it had a thousand acres Of untrodden space around it, and never Knew the danger it incurred. It did not borrow trouble, nor invite an Evil fate by apprehending it.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Horse, Flower
"The Heart of Thoreau's Journals".

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Men, Alive
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walking: Top Essays”, p.11, 谷月社

And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let us endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur into it. We will remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level life too has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest valleys have a tinge of blue; that there is elevation in every hour, as no part of the earth is so low that the heavens may not be seen from, and we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command an uninterrupted horizon.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Wall, Lying
Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.103, Rowman & Littlefield

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Charity, Appreciated
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.121

In solitude especialy do we begin to appreciate the advantage of living with someone who can think.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Thinking, Appreciate

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial.

Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational, Life, Sports
Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.46, Cosimo, Inc.

A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Business, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.121, David M Gross

I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Feels, Ifs
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.247, Delphi Classics

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Fighting, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.59, Cosimo, Inc.

I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

Henry David Thoreau
Funny, Life, Dream
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2848, Delphi Classics

If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Sweet, Heart
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.70, Xist Publishing

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Dog, Men
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.93

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Book, Reading
1854 Walden, or Life in the Woods,'Reading'.

Poverty ... It is life near the bone, where it is sweetest.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Poverty, Bones
Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden”, p.346, Collector's Library

Man emulates earth Earth emulates heaven Heaven emulates the Way The way emulates nature.

Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational, Life, Positive

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.

Henry David Thoreau
Funny, Life, Death
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.69, Delphi Classics

My greatest skill has been to want but little.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Happiness, Skills
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.111

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Wise, Philosophy
Henry David Thoreau (1937). “The selected works of Thoreau”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Men, Simplicity
Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.74, Heron Dance Press

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

Henry David Thoreau
Funny, Life, Nature
Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods”, p.90, Courier Corporation

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