Henry David Thoreau: Zitate auf Englisch (seite 9)

“It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.”

“If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.”

“Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.”

“Renew thyself completely each day.”

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”

“I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.”

“It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.”

“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”

“Simplify, simplify.”

“Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.”

“This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.”

“if i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well?”

“To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.”

“A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us.”

“The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.”

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”

“Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.”

“Life in us is like the water in a river.”

“It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town… he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.”