Wednesday, September 7, 2022

To effect the quality of the day.


(The art of spending a day)


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.

One does not soon learn the trade of life. That one may work out a true life requires more art and delicate skill than any other work.   December 29, 1841.

I find it to be the height of wisdom not to endeavor to oversee myself . . . but to see over and above myself, entertain sublime conjectures, to make myself the thoroughfare of thrilling thoughts, live all that can be lived. November 23, 1850


Resolve to read no book, to take no walk, to undertake no enterprise, but such as you can endure to give an account of to yourself. Live thus deliberately for the most part. August 23, 1851

It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart. September 2, 1851

The art of spending a day . . . I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it, that the day may not have been in vain. How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my every-day business. September 7, 1851

I wish for leisure and quiet to let my life flow in its proper channels, with its proper currents; when I might not waste the days. December 12, 1851

What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us by letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! This day, yesterday, was as incredible as any other miracle. December 29, 1851

We cannot live too leisurely. Let me not live as if time was short. January 11, 1852

Do the things which lie 
nearest to you – but which are 
difficult to do.

It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day. January 20, 1852

Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature, make a day to bring forth something new? April 18, 1852

The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something. April 29, 1852

The world can never be more beautiful than now. May 18, 1852

A man should not live without a purpose, and that purpose must surely be a grand one. December 15, 1852

The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body, — that so the life be not a failure. March 13, 1853

The sun is now warm on my back, and when I turn round I shade my face with my hands. Nature is beautiful only as a place where a life is to be lived.  July 21, 1853 

All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, — to sing. May 6, 1854

To effect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts . . . Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature . . . determined to make a day of it. Walden

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. October 18, 1855

The advantage of having some purpose, however small, to be accomplished . . .  for only absorbing employment prevails, succeeds, takes up space, occupies territory, determines the future . . . any little enterprise . . . a thing to be done, — some step to be taken, however slight, out of the usual course.  [O]ur days should be spent . . . carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man's genius must have suggested to him [and] the flavor of your life to that extent . . . will be such a sauce as no wealth can buy. August 30, 1856

The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become. August 30, 1856

Each man's necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of. November 18, 1857

It is good policy to be stirring about your affairs, for the reward of activity and energy is that if you do not accomplish the object you had professed to yourself, you do accomplish something else. September 8, 1858

If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow. September 18, 1860

Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, -- the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountain- top through some new vista, -- this is wealth enough for one afternoon. November 22, 1860


To know and possess
the wealth of this afternoon,
get the most of life.

To see the sun rise
or go down every day
full of news to me.

To see what transpires
in the mind and heart of me,
go where my life is.

To attend each thought
every phenomena and
oratorio.

To grow green with spring
yellow and ripe with autumn,
to live each season.

So I help myself,
loving my life as I should –
a day's devotion.

~zphx 20150118



See also 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau
 "A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2022

In the crucible of my celibate life
purified of all desire,
I enter truth from behind
and call her name --
Simplify!

tinyurl.com/HDTTO-DAY
https://tinyurl.com/HDT-DAY

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