The poet will maintain serenity in spite of all disappointments. He is expected to preserve an unconcerned and healthy outlook over the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
His style is eminently colloquial, and no wonder it is strange to meet with in a book. It is not literary or… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Translate a book a dozen times from one language to another, and what becomes of its style? Most books would be worn… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem not printed on paper,... in the poet's… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The culture of the hop ... so analagous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for future poets. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets,--Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, included,--breathes no quite… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“The moose will perhaps one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the other art,... one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
“I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, to life itself, than this incessant business.” — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
