None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Henry David ThoreauRead
Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the value of natural beauty versus artificial arrangements.
Henry David Thoreau contrasts the beauty of a flower in its natural meadow with its placement in a bouquet, questioning if the aesthetic of the arrangement is truly superior to the flower's natural environment. This contemplation invites us to consider the intrinsic value of nature and the authenticity that comes from experiencing it directly, rather than through a curated or artificial lens.
Themes
NatureBeautyPhilosophyAuthenticityArrangement
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about environmental conservation, one might quote this to highlight the importance of preserving natural habitats.
More from Henry David Thoreau
All quotes →Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.
Henry David ThoreauRead
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
Henry David ThoreauRead
Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable.
Henry David ThoreauRead
As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.
Henry David ThoreauRead
That grand old poem called Winter
Henry David ThoreauRead
Similar quotes
Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.
Raymond CarverRead
Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.
Salman RushdieRead
A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.
Thomas MertonRead
Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.
Frank HerbertRead
God has allowed some magical reversal to occur, so that you see the scorpion pit as an object of desire, and all the beautiful expanse around it as dangerous and swarming with snakes.
RumiRead
Reality is contradictory. And it's paradoxical. If there's any one word -- if you had to pick one word to describe the nature of the universe -- I think that word would be paradox. That's true at the subatomic level, right through sociological, psychological, philosophical levels on up to cosmic levels.
Tom RobbinsRead