None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Henry David ThoreauRead
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
Interpretation
A house is meaningless without a healthy planet to support it.
This quote by Henry David Thoreau emphasizes the importance of our environment in relation to our homes and lives. It suggests that no matter how significant our possessions might be, they lose their value if we do not care for the planet that provides us with the foundation of life and well-being.
In practice
In a speech advocating for environmental conservation, one could use this quote to highlight the importance of protecting our planet.
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
We don't know nearly enough about the complexities of Nature. If we think we can eliminate natural ecosystems and substitute prosthetic devices, i.e. clean air or water with fusion energy - we are kidding ourselves.
But the trees seemed to know me. They whispered among themselves and beckoned me nearer.
We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the sea was marked off in bands of sharply-contrasted colors: great stretches of dark blue, others of purple, others of polished bronze; the billowy mountains showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and blacks, and the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat.
Ecology and economy are becoming inextricably entwined, and the world is becoming more conscious of this fact.
Complexity is one of the great problems in environmental design.
We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called.
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