Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Design

• 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

  Beautiful, Art, Humorous

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.142

• To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Life, Time

  Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden: An Annotated Edition”, p.87, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Funny, Life, Running

  Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods”, p.48, Courier Corporation

• I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Past, Design, Society

  Henry David Thoreau, Barry Andrews (2005). “True Harvest: Readings from Henry David Thoreau for Every Day of the Year”, p.83, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

• I have not the most definite designs on the future.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Future, Design, Dogma

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.96, Penguin

• The word which is best said came nearest to not being spoken at all, for it is cousin to a deed which the speaker could have better done. Nay, almost it must have taken the place of a deed by some urgent necessity, even by some misfortune, so that the truest writer will be some captive knight, after all. And perhaps the fates had such a design, when, having stored Raleigh so richly with the substance of life and experience, they made him a fast prisoner, and compelled him to make his words his deeds, and transfer to his expression the emphasis and sincerity of his action.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Cousin, Taken

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.87, Jazzybee Verlag

• Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface,not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Men, Design

  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.292, e-artnow

• The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Artist, Imagination, Track

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.153

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