Henry David Thoreau Quotes

When all choice is taken from you, life becomes a game of survival.

You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.

Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.

Life is not just one dark moment after another.

But what is to be done? Is it possible to infect ourselves on purpose just in order to have the satisfaction of dying beautifully and tranquilly? No! What is to be done? We must live while we are alive, eat dry bread if there is no roast beef, know many women if it is not possible to love a woman, and, in general, we must not dream about orange trees and palms, when under foot are snowdrifts and the cold tundra.

Sometimes that's all life is... One desperate act after another.

Watch out for life ... It's harder than it looks.

Life is a series of problems.

When your life has been spent in one war after another for forty-five years, you have to be pretty handy to survive.

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!

Life did not present its sunny side to thee.

Pain is itself a god: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip, and all that lives will move. To live is to be a slave to pain.

Even in the most wretched life, there’s hope.

It was meant to be that life would be a challenge. To suffer some anxiety, some depression, some disappointment, even some failure is normal. Teach our members that if they have a good, miserable day once in a while, or several in a row, to stand steady and face them. Things will straighten out. There is great purpose in our struggle in life.

To die, it's easy. But you have to struggle for life.

One of the most fascinating lessons I've absorbed about life is that the struggle is good.

We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

Do anything, save to lie down and die!

It’s not over if you’re still here,” Chronicler said. “It’s not a tragedy if you’re still alive.

Waiting is one of life’s hardships.

We must try not to sink beneath our anguish, Harry, but battle on.

There are no laurels in life, just new challenges.

Let me tell you, life is interesting regardless of when you are in the fight.