Quote

Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.

Henry David Thoreau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Exactly
Hue
Right
Poet
Verse
Much
Failing
Verses
Poetry
Fails
Written
Near
Though
Miracle
Inconceivably
Inspirational
Caught
Vaster
Thought
Crisis
Receding

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought - with these I deal.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated fromlong housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Law never made men a whit more just.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone he sees a great deal of company he is legion.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
In order to die, you must first have lived.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as if it were redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If Nature is our mother, then God is our father.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Time & Co. are, after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
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.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be a matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Duty is one and invariable it requires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with impunity.
Henry David Thoreau