Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Every green thing loves to die in bright colors. The vegetable cohorts march glowing out of the year in flaming dresses, as if to leave this earth were a triumph and not a sadness. It is never nature that is sad, but only we, that dare not look back on the past, and that have not its prophecy of the future in our bosoms.

Does a leaf, when it falls from the tree in winter, feel defeated by the cold? The tree says to the leaf: "That’s the cycle of life. You may think you’re going to die, but you live on in me. It’s thanks to you that I’m alive, because I can breathe. It’s also thanks to you that I have felt loved, because I was able to give shade to the weary traveller. Your sap is in my sap; we are one thing.

How strange and awful is the synthesis of life and death in the gusty winds and falling leaves of an autumnal day!

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.

And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death.

We think birth is a miracle and death is a tragedy, but really they're flip sides of the same coin - anything born is gonna die.

Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?

The preciousness of life and the changes of weather and the beauty of seasons - all those things have always sort of dazzled me.

Death is just a part of life, you know? It's what makes all of life more vibrant. It's coming whether we want to accept it or not.

Every season is a season of its own.

You can't have living without dying.

The leaves had fallen from the trees and lay crisp and crackling beneath his feet. Picking one up he marveled, not for the first time, at the perfection of nature where leaves were most beautiful at the very end of their lives.

Living Nature, not dull art Shall plan my ways and rule my Heart.

Death is a part of life ... and that part of life needs everything that the rest of life does.

If you were not born in this world, there would be no need to die. To be born in this world is to die, to disappear [laughing].

Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.

The last to be overcome is death, and the knowledge of life is the knowledge of death.

I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing.

Generations of men are like the leaves. In winter, winds blow them down to earth, but then, when spring season comes again, the budding wood grows more. And so with men: one generation grows, another dies away.

when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.

It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb and said, "They all feed one another," and called it good.

Now I realize that the trees blossom in Spring and bear fruit in Summer without seeking praise; and they drop their leaves in Autumn and become naked in Winter without fearing blame.