None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Henry David ThoreauRead
Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!
Interpretation
What this quote means
Thoreau reflects on how human presence does not contribute positively to the beauty of the natural world.
In this quote, Thoreau remarks on the contrast between the natural beauty of the landscape and the often forgettable impact of human beings on it. He suggests that while nature possesses an inherent beauty, the memory of human actions and existence is fleeting and does little to enhance that beauty, prompting a contemplation of our place within the natural world.
Themes
NatureBeautyLandscapeHuman ExistenceThoreau
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about environmental conservation to emphasize the importance of valuing nature over human impact.
More from Henry David Thoreau
All quotes βThrough 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
Take a trip to the forest and experience the greatness of getting on your knees and picking your own food and going home... and eating it.
Rene RedzepiRead
I go to the Himalayas after every film. I go alone. I go to the interiors, to the villages. Being there itself is like meditation.
RajinikanthRead
The global environment crisis is, as we say in Tennessee, real as rain, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving my children with a degraded earth and a diminished future.
Al GoreRead
Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come... Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own - indeed, to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder.
Wangari MaathaiRead
I swam across the rocks and compared myself favorably with the sars. To swim fishlike, horizontally, was the logical method in a medium eight hundred times denser than air. To halt and hang attached to nothing, no lines or air pipe to the surface, was a dream. At night I had often had visions of flying by extending my arms as wings. Now I flew without wings. (Since that first aqualung flight, I have never had a dream of flying.)
Jacques Yves CousteauRead
People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.
David AttenboroughRead