We seem to have a fear of empty spaces. The philosopher Spinoza called this a horror vacui. We want to fill up what is empty. Our lives stay very full. And when we are not blinded by busyness, we fill our inner space with guilt about things of the past or worries about things to come.

Time becomes a means to an end, not moments in which to enjoy God or pay attention to others.

Activism comes from an unbelief that insists that God does not or cannot move and act; it wants to replace God's supposed slowness or inaction with our activity

The spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now.

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short." [ Letter to Harrison Blake ; November 16, 1857]

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre.

To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine...So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express! I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, running in the face of it.

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

The seasons and all their changes are in me.