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Henry David Thoreau

Quote of Henry David Thoreau - It is something to be able...


Biography - Henry David Thoreau:

American essayist, poet and philosopher.
Born: 1817 - Died: 1862
Period:
19th century
Place of birth: United States
United States

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.


Note 

Note



"It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour."


Source: Walden; or, Life in the Woods

Wikisource - Thoreau - Walden, or, Life in the Woods (en) 




Translation

Translation

(German, French)



German
Es ist etwas, ein bestimmtes Bild malen oder eine Statue schnitzen zu können, um so einige Objekte schön zu machen, aber es ist weitaus herrlicher, genau die Atmosphäre und das Medium zu schnitzen und zu malen, durch die wir schauen, was wir moralisch tun können. Um die Qualität des Tages zu beeinflussen, ist das die höchste Kunst.

French
C'est quelque chose que d’être capable de peindre un tableau ou de sculpter une statue, et ainsi de rendre beaux quelques objets ; mais combien plus glorieux de sculpter et de peindre l'atmosphère même et le medium à travers lequel nous percevons – ce que moralement nous pouvons accomplir. Affecter la qualité du jour, tel est l'art le plus haut.




See also 

See also...



Beauty is no quality in things themselves : It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them ; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.




Quotes for: art


Quotes

Quotes about art:


Truly, art is embedded in nature; he who can extract it, has it.





My trade and art is to live.





The more I think about it the more I feel that there’s nothing more genuinely artistic than to love people.





Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.





I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.'





The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.











Quotes for: day


Quotes

Quotes for: day


The sun is new each day.





Seize the day.





The best way to begin each day well is to think upon awakening whether we could not give at least one person pleasure on this day.





The most completely lost of all days is that on which one has not laughed.





A day without laughter is a day wasted.





You cannot hold the day back, but you can avoid wasting it.
 / 











Quotes for: beauty


Quotes

Quotes about beauty:


Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.





All the diversity, all the charm, all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.





All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.





Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.





What beauty is, I know not.





I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.











Quotes for: painting


Quotes

Quotes about painting:


I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.





Eloquence is a painting of thought.





Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.





I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.





No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.





If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.











Quotes

Henry David Thoreau also said...


It is never too late to give up our prejudices.





Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.





It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.





A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.





Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.





The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.












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