Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Well, there's a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other.

Everyone is going to die.

Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.

Death is like an arrow that is already in flight, and your life lasts only until it reaches you.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.

In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.

Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.

The Grim Reaper doesn't disappear... he catches up.

If God in his wisdom have brought closeThe day when I must die,That day by water or fire or airMy feet shall fall in the destined snareWherever my road may lie.

Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man

Within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court.

Everything alive must die. Every building built to the sky will fall. Don't try to tell me my everlasting love is a lie.

Life is but sighs; and, when they cease, 'tis over.

Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.

Her voice, high and clear, moved through the leaves, through the sunlight. It splashed onto the gravel, the grass. He imagined the notes falling into the air like stones into water, rippling the invisible surface of the world. Waves of sound, waves of light: his father had tried to pin everything down, but the world was fluid and could not be contained.

There is something inexpressibly charming in falling in love and, surely, the whole pleasure lies in the fact that love isn't lasting.

I've become a collector of stories about unlikely returns: the sudden reappearance of the long-lost son, the father found, the lovers reunited after forty years. Once in awhile, a letter does fall behind a post office desk and lie there for years before it's finally discovered and delivered to the rightful address. The seemingly brain-dead sometimes wake up and start talking. I'm always on the lookout for proof that what is done can sometimes be undone.

Death, thou shalt die.

Death will come when thou art dead, soon, too soon.

Tell him,' the colonel said, smiling, 'that a person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.

Would you like to play With the thought of a friend In a distant passing stage While you lie around With your hands up and out So resigned you will fall down.

A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives--all bear secret relations to our destinies.

I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters.