“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.”

— Henry David Thoreau

February 28, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update March 7, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double…" by Henry David Thoreau?

Henry David Thoreau photo

Henry David Thoreau385

1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

Related quotes

“The titan is tired. We Americans have our own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own—be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, wherever. And we don't need our friends looking to us to do so.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Titan is Tired,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=599 WorldNetDaily.com, April 29, 2011. <br class="br">2010s, 2011

“Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life--and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.”

Dean Koontz book Fear Nothing

Source: Fear Nothing

“Fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends.”

Jacques Delille (1738–1813) French poet and translator

Le sort fait les parents, le choix fait les amis.
Malheur at Pitié (1803), canto I.

“The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“There is not a moment in our lives that we do not go through a battle. That is the fate of humans in their wanderings in this sad world. We are forced to make choices, who we should side with and how we should act. Like it or not, we have to fight. Because those who refuse to fight will be considered cowards or losers. In the end it's not a matter of losing or winning, but at least we have fought.”

“If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing this. … We call our strategy the "wedge."”

Phillip E. Johnson (1940–2019) American Law clerk

Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, 1997, pp. 91-92
1990s

“Whatever affection we have for our friends or relations, the happiness of others never suffices for our own.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 188.

“The question was once put to him, how we ought to behave to our friends; and the answer he gave was, "As we should wish our friends to behave to us."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Aristotle, 9.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 5: The Peripatetics

“We should always choose our books as God chooses our friends, just a bit beyond us, so that we have to do our level best to keep up with them.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

“Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Related topics