"It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see."
"In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, "memoirs to serve for a history," which is but materials to serve for a mythology."
3 likes
Source: Henry David Thoreau (1975). “Early Essays and Miscellanies”, p.60, Princeton University Press
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
"Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!"
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined..."
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately."
"be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be."
"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us."