"I went to the woods because I..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.
More by Henry David Thoreau
“Live free, child of the mist,- and with respect to knowledge we are allchildren of the mist.”
“The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.”
“Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment, and childlike mirth-fulness. If you would know aught, be gay before it.”
More on Life
“Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome. Every beginning is cheerful: the threshold is the place of expectation.”
“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”
“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”
More on Purpose
“All is well. You did not come here to fix a broken world. The world is not broken. You came here to live a wonderful life. And if you can learn to relax a little and let it all in, you will begin to see the universe present you with all that you have asked for.”
“He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter.”
“Your job is not just to do what your parents say, what your teachers say, what society says, but to figure out what your heart calling is and to be led by that.”