- Source
- Walden
- Date
- 1854
Meaning of “To be awake is to be alive.”
Being fully attentive is presented as a deeper form of living than merely moving through routine.
Where does it come from?
Walden, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.”
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“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
Meaning & context
Awareness of limited time is turned into a reason to choose more wisely rather than merely fear mortality.
Source details
Psalm 90:12 in the King James Version.
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“The universe is transformation: life is opinion.”
Meaning & context
Change is treated as the condition of the world, while our experience of life is shaped by judgment.
Source details
Meditations, Book IV, in George Long’s translation.
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“While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.”
Meaning & context
Limited time turns character into a present-tense responsibility rather than a future intention.
Source details
Meditations, Book IV, in George Long’s translation.
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“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.”
Meaning & context
The move to the woods is a deliberate experiment in stripping away distraction and paying closer attention to living.
Source details
Walden, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.”
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“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”
Meaning & context
Mortality cannot be eliminated, so the practical answer is to make conscious use of the finite span between beginning and end.
Source details
Soliloquies in England, “War Shrines”; the sentence follows a contrast between strained worldliness and a more festive acceptance of life.
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“The mind is its own place.”
Meaning & context
The statement emphasizes how mental framing can alter the experience of circumstances, for good or ill.
Source details
Paradise Lost (1667), Book I, line 254; retained legacy short extract from the fuller Satan sentence beginning ‘The mind is its own place’ and continuing into line 255. It is the same underlying passage as the longer catalog record, not a separate fifth passage.
