Skip to content

Beauty Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

50 Beauty quotes by Henry David Thoreau

All Beauty quotes Henry David Thoreau’s page

Henry David Thoreau sees beauty in the simple, natural world, like vines clinging to trees and snowflakes forming in the air. He argues that true beauty is tied to the soul and can appear even in decay or disease. He also suggests that ornament is unnecessary for beauty.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.

Henry David Thoreau

Image

Let the beautiful laws prevail. Let us not weary ourselves by resisting them.

Henry David Thoreau

Image

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.

Henry David Thoreau

Image

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Henry David Thoreau

Image

The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful.

Henry David Thoreau

Image

You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.

Henry David Thoreau

Image

A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors

Henry David Thoreau

Image

“There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, and not a grain…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.

Henry David Thoreau

Image

As in many countries precious metals belong to the crown, so here more precious natural objects of rare beauty should belong to…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

Inexpressibly beautiful appears the recognition by man of the least natural fact, and the allying his life to it.

Henry David Thoreau

Image

What youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

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

Image

It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ.

Henry David Thoreau

Image

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.

Henry David Thoreau

Image

Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

It would be worth the while if in each town there were a committee appointed to see that the beauty of the…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

How full of the creative genius is the air in which these [snowflakes] are generated! I should hardly admire them more if…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

“Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds with their plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers,…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

Truth, Goodness, Beauty - those celestial thrins,Continually are born; e'en now the Universe,With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles,Its joy confesses…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

The eye which can appreciate the naked and absolute beauty of a scientific truth is far more rare than that whichis attracted…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

So behave that the odor of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that when we behold or scent…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

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

Image

A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

To him whom contemplates a trait of natural beauty, no harm nor despair can come. The doctrines of despair, spiritual or political…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some, prodigies and portents; some rarely…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

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

Image

It is comparatively a faint and reflected beauty that is admired, not an essential and intrinsic one. It is because the old…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not fitted…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

Henry David Thoreau

Image

Such is beauty ever,-neither here nor there, now nor then,-neither in Rome nor in Athens, but wherever there is a soul to…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

“Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid.”

Henry David Thoreau

Image

The object of love expands and grows before us to eternity, until it includes all that is lovely, and we become all…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

“Beauty is where it is perceived. When I see the sun shinning on the woods across the pond, I think this side…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

The eye which can appreciate the naked and absolute beauty of a scientific truth is far more rare than that which is…

Henry David Thoreau

Image

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

Image

Other authors on Beauty

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