An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American writer and philosopher, known for Walden, an account of two years spent in a cabin by a pond in Massachusetts. His essay Civil Disobedience, written after he refused to pay a tax in protest against slavery and war, later influenced Gandhi and King.
About this theme: Happiness
Few subjects have been written about so much with so little agreement. For Aristotle happiness was not a feeling but a way of living — eudaimonia, visible only when a life is viewed whole. For the Epicureans it was the absence of disturbance. For the Stoics it was a consequence of virtue and never a target. None of these is the same as being in a good mood, yet that substitution is the one most often made.
More by Henry David Thoreau
- Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
- The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
- Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
- Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit.
- Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.
More on Happiness
- The earth laughs in flowers.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
- True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.— Seneca
- He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.— Lao Tzu
- Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.— Epictetus
- He is richest who is content with the least.— Socrates