None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Henry David ThoreauRead
Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.
Interpretation
Gardening fosters community and civility but lacks the wildness and freedom found in nature's untamed spaces.
In this quote, Henry David Thoreau contrasts the structured, social activity of gardening with the wild, unrestricted essence of nature represented by forests and outlaws. He suggests that while gardening has its merits in promoting social interaction and civility, it also yearns for the raw vigor and independence that comes from the untamed wilderness, highlighting a tension between civilization and nature's freedom.
In practice
In a speech about urban green spaces, one could use this quote to address the balance between community gardens and natural preservation.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable.
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.
That grand old poem called Winter
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.
It is evident that many wars are fought over resources which are now becoming increasingly scarce. If we conserved our resources better, fighting over them would not occur ... protecting the global environment is directly related to securing peace. Those of us who understand the complex concept of the environment have the burden to act. We must not tire, we must not give up, we must persist.
The carbon emissions from tar shale and tar sands would initiate a continual unfolding of climate disasters over the course of this century. We would be miserable stewards of creation. We would rob our own children and grandchildren.
The environment is in us, not outside of us. The trees are our lungs, the rivers our bloodstream. We are all interconnected, and what you do to the environment ultimately you do to yourself.
Is it too late to prevent us from self-destructing? No, for we have the capacity to design our own future, to take a lesson from living things around us and bring our values and actions in line with ecological necessity. But we must first realize that ecological and social and economic issues are all deeply intertwined. There can be no solution to one without a solution to the others.
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