None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Henry David ThoreauRead
It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination
Interpretation
Connecting deeply with nature enhances our intellect and creativity.
Thoreau emphasizes that a profound connection between the soul and the natural world is essential for intellectual growth and imaginative thinking. This union allows individuals to tap into deeper insights and foster creativity, illustrating the importance of nature in the cultivation of the mind.
In practice
In a speech about environmental awareness, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of nature for human development.
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
...if we want to meet the obligations of our civilization and our culture which are to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting that infrastructure; the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the landscapes that enrich us.
We are facing a tipping point of environmental crisis unprecedented in human history and our very survival is dependent on protecting nature.
The facts of nature cannot in the long run be violated. Penetrating and seeping through everything like water, they will undermine any system that fails to take account of them, and sooner or later they will bring about its downfall. But an authority wise enough in its statesmanship to give sufficient free play to nature - of which spirit is a part - need fear no premature decline.
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it.
We can speak without voice to the trees and the clouds and the waves of the sea. Without words they respond through the rustling of leaves and the moving of clouds and the murmuring of the sea.
When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.
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