Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Art
Painted by the frosts, some a uniform clear bright yellow, or red, or crimson, as if their spheres had regularly revolved, and enjoyed the influence of the sun on all sides alike,—some with the faintest pink blush imaginable,—some brindled with deep red streaks like a cow, or with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running regularly from the stem-dimple to the blossom end, like meridional lines, on a straw-colored ground,—some touched with a greenish rust, like a fine lichen, here and there, with crimson blotches or eyes more or less confluent and fiery when wet,—and others gnarly, and freckled or peppered all over on the stem side with fine crimson spots on a white ground, as if accidentally sprinkled from the brush of Him who paints the autumn leaves.—"Wild Apples"
The artist and his work are not to be separated.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or nature.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
The forest looked like a firm grass sward, and the effect of these lakes in its midst has been well compared, by one who has since visited this same spot, to that of a "mirror broken into a thousand fragments, and wildly scattered over the grass, reflecting the full blaze of the sun."—The Maine Woods
The past is the canvass on which our idea is painted,—the dim prospectus of our future field. We are dreaming of what we are to do.—"The Service"
The poet or the artist never had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.—Walden
The world is but a canvas to our imaginations.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We should read history as little critically as we consider the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create, than by its groundwork and composition. It is the morning now turned evening and seen in the west,—the same sun, but a new light and atmosphere. Its beauty is like the sunset; not a fresco painting on a wall, flat and bounded, but atmospheric and roving or free.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
What a faculty must that be which can paint the most barren landscape and humblest life in glorious colors!—Journal, 21 August 1851
