None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Henry David ThoreauRead
Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Many claim to appreciate music, yet their actions often reveal otherwise.
Thoreau points out the contradiction between people's claims of loving music and their actual engagement with it. He suggests that true appreciation of music should reflect in their actions and choices, rather than being merely a verbal declaration.
Themes
MusicAppreciationActionsLifeOpinions
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the role of art in society, this quote highlights the importance of genuine engagement.
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
In some century to come, when the school children will whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones--when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic is now--perhaps then these borderland experiences may be both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense
Charles IvesRead
Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling.
Pat ConroyRead
This making studies and then taking them home to use them is only half right. You get composition, but you lose freshness; you miss the subtle and, to the artist, the finer characteristics of the scene itself.
Winslow HomerRead
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeRead
What I want, when I write a poem, is no more than this: that it be preserved in some published form so that, in principle, someone, somewhere, will be able to find it and read it. That is all I need, as a poet, and that is the beauty, the luxury of my position. My lyric is mine and remains mine. Nobody can ruin it.
James FentonRead
The anarchist painter is not the one who will create anarchist pictures, but the one who will fight with all his individuality against official conventions.
Paul SignacRead