A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Henry David Thoreau

Quote Topics

Ability AIDS Alive Awake Conscious Could Dawn Divine Divine Life Does Effective Elevate Encouraging Endeavor Enough Exertion Expectation Face Fact Forsake Him His How Hundred Infinite Intellectual Keep Know Labor Learn Life Looked Man Mechanical Met Million Millions More Must Never One In A Million Only Our Ourselves Physical Poetic Quite Sleep Than Us Which

Quote Author

Henry David Thoreau
American - Author
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.

Henry David Thoreau

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

Henry David Thoreau

To be awake is to be completely alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.

Henry David Thoreau

Not causing harm requires staying awake. Part of being awake is slowing down enough to notice what we say and do. The more we witness our emotional chain reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain. It becomes a way of life to stay awake, slow down, and notice.

Pema Chodron

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Henry David Thoreau

What does it mean that I am in this endless universe, thinking that I'm a man sitting under the stars on the terrace of the earth, but actually empty and awake throughout the emptiness and awakedness of everything? It means that I'm empty and awake, that I know I'm empty and awake, and that there's no difference between me and anything else.

Jack Kerouac

The majority of people are not awake; it is only here and there that we find one even partially awake. Practically all of us, as a result, are living lives that are unworthy almost the name of lives, compared to those we might be living, and that lie within our easy grasp. While it is true that each life is in and of Divine Being, hence always one with it, in order that this great fact bear fruit in individual lives, each one must be conscious of it; he or she must know it in thought, and then live continually in this consciousness.

Ralph Waldo Trine

England! awake! awake! awake! Jerusalem thy sister calls! Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death And close her from thy ancient walls?

William Blake

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake.

Henry David Thoreau

Awake, dear heart, awake. Thou hast slept well. Awake.

William Shakespeare

Aubade THE lark now leaves his wat'ry nest, And climbing shakes his dewy wings. He takes this window for the East, And to implore your light he sings- Awake, awake! the morn will never rise Till she can dress her beauty at your eyes. The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, The ploughman from the sun his season takes, But still the lover wonders what they are Who look for day before his mistress wakes. Awake, awake! break thro' your veils of lawn! Then draw your curtains, and begin the dawn!

William Davenant

I'm quite well-rehearsed in having mental days; being awake at the crack of dawn and still having to be awake late at night.

Amy Macdonald

Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.

Octavio Paz

God speaks once, yea twice, yet Man perceiveth it not, in a Dream, in a Vision of the night, when deep Sleep falleth upon men, in slumbering upon the bed. We need not, when abed, to lie awake to talk with God, he can visit us while we sleep, and cause us then to hear his Voice. Our heart oft-times wakes when we sleep, and God can speak to that, either by words, by proverbs, by signs and similitudes, as well as if one was awake