Henry David Thoreau Quotes

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.

But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

The fact we exist merely means we exist. That's all it means.

I searched all areas of knowledge, and not only did I fail to find anything, but I was convinced that all those who had explored as I did had also come up with nothing. Not only had they found nothing, but they had clearly acknowledged the same thing that had brought me to despair: the only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

Don’t ask me those questions! Don’t ask me what life means or how we know reality or why we have to suffer so much. Don’t talk about how nothing feels real, how everything is coated with gelatin and shining like oil in the sun. I don’t want to hear about the tiger in the corner or the Angel of Death or the phone calls from John the Baptist.

Somewhere I heard a victorious "Yes" in answer to my question of the existence of ultimate purpose.

Existence is not a mystery unless you think it has a meaning.

It’s true, isn’t it? Then what else really matters?

When you don't believe in anything except not dying, you don't really believe in anything.

Any moment that opens us up to the reality that life is good is a parable of the supreme end for which we were made.

Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death that awaits me does not undo and destroy?

Life is but a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream.

Well, what I don't get is why do we exist? I don't mean how, but why.' I watched the fireflies of his thoughts orbit his head. He said, 'we exist because we exist. . .we could imagine all sorts of universes like this one, but this is the one that happened.

I don’t know what it means to live.

The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope.

There was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with.

She believed, of course ... because without something to believe in, life would be intolerable.

Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him.

Philosophy asks the simple question: What is it all about?

Reality is the page. Life is the word.

Whence are we, and why are we? Of what scene The actors or spectators?

I have to convince myself that this is not a pointless life, even the body is telling me so.

It is worth while dying, to find out what life is.

Society ... is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. To live alone, to remain unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later -- this is what is called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity!