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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.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden; or, Life in the Woods


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."


Quote 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.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden oder Leben in den Wäldern

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.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden ou la Vie dans les bois



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.
David Hume - Of the Standard of Taste

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.
Ludwig Wittgenstein - Tractatus Logico-philosophicus

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

The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is.
Marcel Proust - La Prisonnière



Quotes for: art


Quotes

Quotes about art:


Truly, art is embedded in nature; he who can extract it, has it.
Albrecht Dürer - Four Books of Human Proportion / 





My trade and art is to live.
Michel de Montaigne - Essays / 





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





Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.
Pablo Picasso / 





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.'
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - The Joyful Science / 





The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations / 






All about art...




Quotes for: day


Quotes

Quotes for: day


The sun is new each day.
Heraclitus of Ephesus - Fragments / 





Seize the day.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus - Odes / 





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.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - Human, All Too Human / 





The most completely lost of all days is that on which one has not laughed.
Nicolas Chamfort - Maximes et pensées / 





A day without laughter is a day wasted.
Charlie Chaplin / 





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






All day quotes...




Quotes for: beauty


Quotes

Quotes about beauty:


All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
Baruch Spinoza - Ethics / 





Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
Confucius / 





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





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





What beauty is, I know not.
Albrecht Dürer / 





I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.
Albrecht Dürer - Four Books of Human Proportion / 






All about beauty...




Quotes for: painting


Quotes

Quotes about painting:


I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
Claude Monet / 





Eloquence is a painting of thought.
Blaise Pascal - Pensées / 





Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray / 





I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
Pablo Picasso / 





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.
Edvard Munch / 





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






All about painting...




Quotes

Henry David Thoreau also said...


It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden; or, Life in the Woods / 





Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau / 





It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden; or, Life in the Woods / 





A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden; or, Life in the Woods / 





Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.
Henry David Thoreau / 





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.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden; or, Life in the Woods / 







More quotes...





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