Quote

Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.

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
Broken
Horizon
Crumbling
Least
Backgrounds
Scenery
Actually
Desert
Behold
Lives
Fairs
Suitable
Whole
Solitude
Distinct
Life
Fair
Limitless
Like
Thus
Impressive
Shaft
Objects
Background
Mound

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
The voice of nature is always encouraging.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Be it life or death, we crave only reality.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Our taste is too delicate and particular. It says nay to the poet's work, but never yea to his hope.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banksmany a poet's stream, floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The outward is only the outside of that which is within. Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by them they are their true clothes.
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
That grand old poem called Winter
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and the hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
How many fine thoughts has every man had! How few fine thoughts are expressed!
Henry David Thoreau
Image
All the events which make the annals of the nations are but the shadows of our private experiences.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Show me two villages, one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the other a merely trivial and treelesswaste, or with only a single tree or two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most starved and bigoted religionists and the most desperate drinkers.
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
I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America. Neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in Mythology than in any history of America so called that I have seen.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Say, Not so, and you will out circle the philosophers.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
As far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned, the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in vain that the squirrels live in or about every forest tree, or hollow log, and every wall and heap of stones.
Henry David Thoreau