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Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Beauty

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You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.

You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Peace, Mind
Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.83, Heron Dance Press

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

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Rome, Soul
Henry David Thoreau, Barry Andrews (2005). “True Harvest: Readings from Henry David Thoreau for Every Day of the Year”, p.32, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

How full of the creative genius is the air in which these [snowflakes] are generated! I should hardly admire them more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat. Nature is full of genius. Full of the divinity. So that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Art, Stars
Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861”, p.356, New York Review of Books

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

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Memories, Doe
Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.170, Cosimo, Inc.

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

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Love Is, Lovely
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1758, Delphi Classics

A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most have beauty of outline merely, and are striking as the form and bearing of a stranger; but true verses come toward us indistinctly, as the very breath of all friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit and fragrance.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Expression, Poetry
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.279, Delphi Classics

It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance ... To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Hair, Vision
Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861”, p.349, New York Review of Books

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

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Faces, Glances
Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.83, Heron Dance Press

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Beauty, Perception
Henry David Thoreau, John C. Broderick, Robert Sattelmeyer (1981). “Journal”, p.120, Princeton University Press

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours; and yet how long it stands in vain!... Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Weed, Long
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.158, Yale University Press

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

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Greek, Ornaments
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.517, Simon and Schuster

All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Writing, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.516, Simon and Schuster

It is comparatively a faint and reflected beauty that is admired, not an essential and intrinsic one. It is because the old are weak, feel their mortality, and think that they have measured the strength of man. They will not boast; they will be frank and humble. Well, let them have the few poor comforts they can keep. Humility is still a very human virtue. They look back on life, and so see not into the future. The prospect of the young is forward and unbounded, mingling the future with the present.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Humility, Humble
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.110, Delphi Classics

Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Beauty, Nature
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.269, Xist Publishing

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

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Beautiful, Law
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.361, Penguin

Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Fire, Ice
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1865). “Letters to Various Persons”, p.194

While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are attracted strongly to Nature. In their reaction to Naturemen appear to me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the animals. How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there is among us! We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Kosmos, Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a curious philological fact.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Beautiful, Appreciation
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.410, Penguin

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Country, Views
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.36, Graphic Arts Books

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

So behave that the odor of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that when we behold or scent a flower, we may not be reminded how inconsistent your deeds are with it; for all odor is but one form of advertisement of a moral quality, and if fair actions had not been performed, the lily would not smell sweet. The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal.

Henry David Thoreau
Beauty, Sweet, Spring
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Collected Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated): Philosophical and Autobiographical Books, Essays, Poetry, Translations, Biographies & Letters: Walden, Civil Disobedience, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, Slavery in Massachusetts, Walking…”, p.1093, e-artnow

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