Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.
Henry David ThoreauRead
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Interpretation
Losing enthusiasm for life can make people feel older than they truly are.
This quote by Henry David Thoreau highlights the idea that enthusiasm is a vital force that keeps us youthful and spirited. When people lose their passion and excitement for life, they may feel older and less vibrant, regardless of their actual age.
In practice
To inspire others at a motivational seminar about finding joy in everyday tasks.
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
Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?
Nimble thought can jump both sea and land.
All I know from my own experience is that the more loss we feel the more grateful we should be for whatever it was we had to lose. It means that we had something worth grieving for. The ones I'm sorry for are the ones that go through life not knowing what grief is.
Clever talk can confound the workings of virtue, just as small impatiences can confound great projects.
Even if I could, I wouldn't. Scars can come in handy. I have one myself above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground.
Every man is eloquent once in his life.
Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity.
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