“To affect the quality of the day - that is the highest of the arts.”

“The greatest art is to shape the quality of the day. ”

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

“Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.”

“It has come to this, that the lover of art is one, and the lover of nature another, though true art is but the expression of our love of nature.”

“That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way.All memorable events ... transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say "All intelligences awake in the morning." Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour.Walden”

“The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”