A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

Henry David Thoreau

Quote Topics

Been Contemplative Fishing Man More Only Recreation Science

Quote Author

Henry David Thoreau
American - Author
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled "a contemplative man's recreation," introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

Henry David Thoreau

Theater is a recreation. It can be much more, but unless it's recreation, I don't see the point of it.

Tom Stoppard

Fish slowly and thoroughly. Haste never paid dividends. Never wory about the fellow ahead of you. If you start racing to get ahaead of him, he'll probably try to beat you, and from then on it will be nothing but a foot-race instead of a contemplative and inspiring recreation.

Ray Bergman

Meditative state is the highest state of existence. So long as there is desire, no real happiness can come. It is only the contemplative, witness-like study of objects that brings to us real enjoyment and happiness. The animal has its happiness in the senses, the man in his intellect, and the god in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful. To him who desires nothing, and does not mix himself up with them, the manifold changes of nature are one panorama of beauty and sublimity.

Swami Vivekananda

Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two ideas, I think art as recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important.

Lin Yutang

A war fitness conference some time ago declared that the highest form of recreation is to go to church. The word recreation should be written re-creation. More real rest can be gained from an hour and a quarter of worship under these circumstances than by eighteen holes of golf.

Norman Vincent Peale

Since I was introduced to the practice of God's presence, which in turn led me into the contemplative way, I have nearly always felt so rich, so blessed, so sincerely full of "enough."...I believe it is on this robust, overflowing ...contemplative pathway that one gains the joy and serenity to be generous.

Brian D. McLaren

The man who works 52 weeks in the year does not do his best in any one week of the year, Daniel Guggenheim, onetime head of the greatest smelting and mining family in America, impressed upon me. Real recreation quickens aspiration. The true purpose of recreation is not merely to amuse, not merely to afford pleasure, not merely to kill time, but to increase our fitness, enhance our usefulness, spur achievement.

B. C. Forbes

When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.

Agnes Repplier

Make thy recreation servant to thy business, lest thou become a slave to thy recreation.

Francis Quarles

Life is best enjoyed when time periods are evenly divided between labor, sleep, and recreation...all people should spend one-third of their time in recreation which is rebuilding, voluntary activity, never idleness.

Brigham Young

One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is more suspicious, in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men.

Thomas Merton

Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season. All great men of letters have therefore been enthusiastic walkers.

Leslie Stephen

A recreation is not the same as a remix. A recreation has a new element added to it. There are new lyrics added to it. A new composition is introduced within the existing one and I feel that's tougher to do.

Tulsi Kumar

To the old saying that man built the house but woman made of it a 'home' might be added the modern supplement that woman accepted cooking as a chore but man has made of it a recreation.