Quote

Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.

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
Better
Distant
Warmth
Ice
Warm
Cold
Purer
Fire
Durable
Beauty
Serene
Whatever
Behold

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There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite.
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When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?
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I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.
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Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit.
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I have travelled a good deal in Concord.
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One must maintain a little bittle of summer, even in the middle of winter.
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Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.
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God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
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The virtue of making two blades of grass grow where only one grew before does not begin to be superhuman.
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The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.
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Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?
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The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly.
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To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done,and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements.
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I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.
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Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.
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The intellect of most men is barren. They neither fertilize or are fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination...without nature-awakened imagination most persons do not really live in the world, they merely pass through it as they live dull lives of quiet desperation.
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What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives.
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I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.
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It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
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