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Art Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

72 Art quotes by Henry David Thoreau

All Art quotes Henry David Thoreau’s page

A snowflake drifting in cold air reminds us that Thoreau saw nature itself as a mystical source of creative genius. He compares art to the pure discoveries of a shipwrecked mariner, and he links luxury to the fruit of art in agriculture, commerce, literature, and painting.

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Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more.

Henry David Thoreau

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This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Henry David Thoreau

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“AN ARTIST IS FIRST AN AMATEUR”

Henry David Thoreau

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The highest condition of art is artlessness.

Henry David Thoreau

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“The greatest art is to shape the quality of the day. ”

Henry David Thoreau

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Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the…

Henry David Thoreau

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To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts.

Henry David Thoreau

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The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.

Henry David Thoreau

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It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part.

Henry David Thoreau

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Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art.

Henry David Thoreau

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The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body.

Henry David Thoreau

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The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.

Henry David Thoreau

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To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Henry David Thoreau

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Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in…

Henry David Thoreau

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“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even…

Henry David Thoreau

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Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is…

Henry David Thoreau

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The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most willfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but…

Henry David Thoreau

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There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds. The memorable thought, the happy expression, the…

Henry David Thoreau

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Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be…

Henry David Thoreau

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It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of…

Henry David Thoreau

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The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There…

Henry David Thoreau

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“The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see forms…

Henry David Thoreau

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A written word is the choicestof relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other…

Henry David Thoreau

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“We go eastward to realize history, and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go…

Henry David Thoreau

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Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are…

Henry David Thoreau

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“The Vedas say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of…

Henry David Thoreau

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There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in some books which is very rare to find, and yet looks cheap…

Henry David Thoreau

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It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New…

Henry David Thoreau

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We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has as yet been sung. The ancients had…

Henry David Thoreau

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We seem to have forgotten that the expression "a liberal education" originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while…

Henry David Thoreau

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“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which…

Henry David Thoreau

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“There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to strive after perfection. One day it came into his…

Henry David Thoreau

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The true man of science will know nature better by his finer organization; he will smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than…

Henry David Thoreau

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Nature is a greater and more perfect art, the art of God; though, referred to herself, she is genius; and there is…

Henry David Thoreau

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While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are attracted strongly to Nature. In their reaction to Naturemen…

Henry David Thoreau

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See yonder thin column of smoke curling up through the woods from some invisible farmhouse, the standard raised over some rural homestead……

Henry David Thoreau

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“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that…

Henry David Thoreau

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A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those…

Henry David Thoreau

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In respect to religion and the healing art, all nations are still in a state of barbarism. In the most civilized countries…

Henry David Thoreau

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Such is the never-failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most perfect art in the world; the chisel of a thousand years…

Henry David Thoreau

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More by Henry David Thoreau

If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am…

Henry David Thoreau

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

Henry David Thoreau

“Men say they know many things; But lo! they have taken wings, — The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances; The wind that…

Henry David Thoreau

I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself.

Henry David Thoreau

“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and…

Henry David Thoreau

“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of…

Henry David Thoreau

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may…

Henry David Thoreau

A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.

Henry David Thoreau

In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the…

Henry David Thoreau

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Henry David Thoreau

The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel.

Henry David Thoreau

Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.

Henry David Thoreau

The lumberers rarely trouble themselves to put out their fires, such is the dampness of the primitive forest; and this is one cause, no…

Henry David Thoreau

“When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to…

Henry David Thoreau

Wealth is measured by the level of experience in all aspects of life

Henry David Thoreau