Sunday, May 4, 2014

To Live Deliberately, By Henry David Thoreau


Why should we live in such a hurry and waste of life?
We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.
I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.
I want to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not lived.
I do not wish to live what is not life, living is so dear.
Nor do I wish to practice resignation, unless it is quite necessary.
I want to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,
I want to cut a broad swath, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.
If it proves to be mean, then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world;
Or if it is sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it.

4 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday, Jack Fulford.

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  2. Thoreau. He is able to look inside of us because he has looked inside of himself. He learned and mirrored a lot from Emerson. Although Thoreau may have borrowed the wisdom seeds, it was he who tilled the soil...planted...tended...harvested...and cherished the fruit of his own soulful labor.

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