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There may be something petty in a refined taste it easily degenerates into effeminacy. It does not consider the broadest use. It is not content with simple good and bad, and so is fastidious and curious or nice only.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
May
Content
Something
Easily
Effeminacy
Good
Consider
Broadest
Taste
Fastidious
Nice
Degenerates
Simple
Refined
Use
Petty
Doe
Curious

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.
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With wisdom we shall learn liberality.
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Love your life, poor as it is.
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There are many skillful apprentices, but few master workmen.
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When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.
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Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not traveling.
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Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nurture out of them by pinching than addressing them.
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Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
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The body can feed the body only.
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Only what is thought, said, or done at a certain rare coincidence is good.
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As I love nature, as I love singing birds...I love thee, my friend.
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I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.
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Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp ? are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?
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My vicinity affords many good walks and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I ever expect to see.
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I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere,--am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first.
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In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.
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It is a relief to read some true book, wherein all are equally dead,--equally alive. I think the best parts of Shakespeare would only be enhanced by the most thrilling and affecting events. I have found it so. And so much the more, as they are not intended for consolation.
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The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.
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I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who have understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,-who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering.
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The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.
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