“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.”

Quote in his letter to brother Theo from Antwerp, Belgium, Febr. 1886; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 449), p 24
1880s, 1886

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Neil Perry character
Context: Modified passage from the book Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Full citation:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

In a 1965 interview with Walter Cronkite, as quoted in "Just A Couple Of Legends" CBS News.com (20 May 1998)
Variant: I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living life, a man who had good friends, fine family — and I don't think I could ask for anything more than that, actually.

One-liners

Source: In the Woods