Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Tragedy

• The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fishing, Tragedy, Life Is

• In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Sad, Live Life, Silence

  Henry David Thoreau, Carl Hovde (1980). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.278, Princeton University Press

• However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the lay, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Imagination, Criticism

• We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Men, Tragedy

  Henry David Thoreau (2002). “Walden: Or, Life in the Woods”, p.26, Courier Corporation

• Nature herself has not provided the most graceful end for her creatures. What becomes of all these birds that people the air and forest for our solacement? The sparrow seems always chipper, never infirm. We do not see their bodies lie about. Yet there is a tragedy at the end of each one of their lives. They must perish miserably; not one of them is translated. True, "not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Heavenly Father's knowledge," but they do fall, nevertheless.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Father, Lying, Fall

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.236

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