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Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Art - Page 2

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If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak, the world's inheritance,... these are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and

If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak, the world's inheritance,... these are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand surmises shed some light on this story.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Men, Light
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “The Most Alive is the Wildest – Thoreau’s Complete Works on Living in Harmony with the Nature: Walden, Walking, Night and Moonlight, The Highland Light, A Winter Walk, The Maine Woods, A Walk to Wachusett, The Landlord, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Autumnal Tints, Wild Apples…”, p.342, e-artnow

There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the other art,... one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the palate.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Art, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.465, Modern Library

The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem not printed on paper,... in the poet's life. It is what hehas become through his work. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper, is the question, but how far it has obtained form and expression in the life of the artist. His true work will not stand in any prince's gallery.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Expression, Ideas
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “HENRY DAVID THOREAU – The Man, The Philosopher & The Trailblazer (Illustrated): Biographies, Memoirs, Autobiographical Books & Personal Letters (Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada…)”, p.275, e-artnow

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

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Years, Perfect
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.29, Xist Publishing

Art can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature. In the former all is seen; it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is niggardly in comparison; but Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Nature, Roots
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.124, Penguin

It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Nature, Mirrors
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.34, Xist Publishing

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Art, Experience
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.31, Courier Corporation

The highest condition of art is artlessness.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Philosophy, History
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.17, BookBaby

Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts - a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Marine, Army
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.198, Graphic Arts Books

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Nature, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.246, Delphi Classics

The sugar maple is remarkable for its clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Feet, Tree
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “A Yankee in Canada: With Anti-slavery and Reform Papers”, p.6

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

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Wisdom, Art
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.103, Jazzybee Verlag

Nature is mythical and mystical always, and works with the license and extravagance of genius. She has her luxurious and florid style as well as art.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Nature, Style
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.953, Delphi Classics

Making a logging-road in the Maine woods is called "swamping" it, and they who do the work are called "swampers." I now perceivedthe fitness of the term. This was the most perfectly swamped of all the roads I ever saw. Nature must have coöperated with art here.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Nature, Swamps
Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.586, Modern Library

It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world, the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Men, Years
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.162, Courier Corporation

See yonder thin column of smoke curling up through the woods from some invisible farmhouse, the standard raised over some rural homestead.... It is a hieroglyphic of man's life, and suggests more intimate and important things than the boiling of a pot. Where its fine column rises above the forest, like an ensign, some human life has planted itself,--and such is the beginning of Rome, the establishment of the arts, and the foundation of empires, whether on the prairies of America or the steppes of Asia.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Men, America

Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Book, House
Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.387, Modern Library

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

Henry David Thoreau
Art, May, Can Do
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.715, Simon and Schuster

In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result,but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man.... Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Nature, Men
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.335

But the eyes, though they are no sailors, will never be satisfied with any model, however fashionable, which does not answer all the requisitions of art.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Eye, Doe
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.93, Penguin

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

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Luxury, Agriculture
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.25

The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit up.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Sea, Wrecks
Henry David Thoreau (2008). “Cape Cod: Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.104, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Nature, Law
1854 Walden, or Life in the Woods,'The Pond inWinter'.

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

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Giving, Imagination
Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.186, Cosimo, Inc.

We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has as yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we. The most distinct and beautiful statements of any truth must take at last the mathematical form. We might so simplify the rules of moral philosophy, as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would express them both.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Beautiful, Art
Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Material Faith: Thoreau on Science”, p.12, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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