None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Henry David ThoreauRead
I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.
Interpretation
Physical effort cannot replace mental or emotional connection between people.
In this quote, Thoreau emphasizes that no matter how much effort we put into physical activities or exertion, it does not necessarily facilitate a deeper understanding or connection between individuals. True closeness comes from engaging thoughts and feelings, suggesting that relationships require more than mere physical presence or interaction; they need emotional and intellectual engagement to thrive.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of emotional intelligence, I could use this quote to illustrate that meaningful relationships go beyond mere physical interaction.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable.
As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.
That grand old poem called Winter
There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who, when danger is pressing in, will not acknowledge the divine power.
Yet if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation; the displacements amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring.
Let him that would move the world first move himself.
The world, although well-lighted with fluorescents and incandescent bulbs and neon, is still full of odd dark corners and unsettling nooks and crannies.
In regard to the past, where contemplation is not obscured by desire and the need for action, we see, more clearly than in the lives about us, the value for good and evil, of the aims men have pursued and the means they have adopted. It is good, from time to time, to view the present as already past, and to examine what elements it contains that will add to the world's store of permanent possessions, that will live and give life when we and all our generation have perished.
People of this world are deluded. They're always longing for something - always, in a word, seeking.
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