None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Henry David ThoreauRead
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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of living a purposeful life and engaging with essential truths.
In this quote, Thoreau reflects on his choice to retreat into nature as a means of seeking a more authentic and deliberate existence. He desires to strip away the distractions of modern life to confront the fundamental truths of his existence, culminating in the idea that one should live fully to avoid regrets at the end of life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about self-discovery and fulfillment.
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
The realm of consciousness is much vaster than thought can grasp. When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are.
People have to struggle to live and, frequently, to live in an undignified way. One cause of this situation, in my opinion, is in the our relationship with money, and our acceptance of its power over ourselves and our society.
Shepherds don't look after sheep because they love them - although I do think some shepherds like their sheep too much. They look after their sheep so they can, first, fleece them and second, turn them into meat. That's much more like the priesthood as I know it.
A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, ‘Where have they taken Him?’
The revival in religion will be a rhetorical problem - new persuasive words for defaced or degraded ones.
They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.