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"Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, or is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent."
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"A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else."
"Genius is an inner inherent intuition and perception. It is not a teachable condition."
"There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling."
"A genius does what he masters. An ordinary man tries to master what he does."
"Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable."
Explore more quotes by Henry David Thoreau
"It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course."
"Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man - a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit."
"Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them."
"The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched."
"A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure."
"Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him."
"I delight to come to my bearings,-not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may,-not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me;-not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less,-not suppose a case, but take the case that is."
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