Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Beauty
If the meadows were untouched, I should no doubt see many more of the rare white and the beautiful smaller purple orchids there, as I now see a few along the shaded brooks and meadow's edge.—Journal, 29 July 1853
In Boston yesterday an ornithologist said significantly, “If you held the bird in your hand—”; but I would rather hold it in my affections.—Journal, 10 May 1854
In reality, history fluctuates as the face of the landscape from morning to evening. What is of moment is its hue and color. Time hides no treasures; we want not its then, but its now. We do not complain that the mountains in the horizon are blue and indistinct; they are the more like the heavens.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
In what book is this world and its beauty described?—Journal, 4 October 1859
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and the medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.—Walden
Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement; but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.—"A Walk to Wachusett"
Most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum—many for a glass of rum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!—Journal, 3 January 1861
Nature is beautiful as in repose, not promising a higher beauty to-morrow. Her actions are level to one another, and so are never unfit or inconsistent.—Journal, 7-10 March 1841
Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace.—Journal, 17 September 1839
Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. She has no interstices; every part is full of life.—"Natural History of Massachusetts"
