Jul 12, 1817

Yesterday was Henry David Thoreau's birthday, born July 12, 1817.

"Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink,
taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each."

Thank you, Jessica W, who posted the quote above and a Happy Birthday to Thoreau on First Universalist Church's Cybercoffeehour yesterday. Quoting Jessica, "Happy birthday Thoreau and thanks for your influence which is considerable indeed." Thoreau is one of our Unitarian Universalist ancestors, a UU saint. If we had saints. Which we don't. But if we did.

Here are some favorite, and most famous, quotations from his work:

I have a great deal of company in my house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.
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A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
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As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
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Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
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Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
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Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
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Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
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How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?
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I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
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I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes
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I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
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If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
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In wilderness is the preservation of the world.
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Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
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Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
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The heart is forever inexperienced.
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The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
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Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
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What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Happy Birthday, Henry.