“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.”

—  Henry David Thoreau

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet …" by Henry David Thoreau?
Henry David Thoreau photo
Henry David Thoreau 385
1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

Related quotes

Oscar Wilde photo

“Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Lady Bracknell, Act I.
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
Context: I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.

Haruki Murakami photo

“Results aside, the ability to have complete faith in another human being is one of the finest qualities a person can possess.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Letting ourselves be forgiven is one of the most difficult healings we will undertake. And one of the most fruitful. (79)”

Stephen Levine (1937–2016) American poet and author

Source: A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

Alain de Botton photo

“If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Art of Travel

Anne Brontë photo

“It is a woman's nature to be constant — to love one and one only, blindly, tenderly, and for ever.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXVII : Misdemeanour; Arthur to Helen

Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist
Anna Quindlen photo

“Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.”

Anna Quindlen book Black and Blue

Source: Black and Blue

William Wilberforce photo

“Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Source: Real Christianity

Nikos Kazantzakis photo

“We do not struggle for ourselves, nor for our race, not even for humanity.
We do not struggle for Earth, nor for ideas.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: We do not struggle for ourselves, nor for our race, not even for humanity.
We do not struggle for Earth, nor for ideas. All these are the precious yet provisional stairs of our ascending God, and they crumble away as soon as he steps upon them in his ascent.
In the smallest lightning flash of our lives, we feel all of God treading upon us, and suddenly we understand: if we all desire it intensely, if we organize all the visible and invisible powers of earth and fling them upward, if we all battle together like fellow combatants eternally vigilant — then the Universe might possibly be saved.
It is not God who will save us — it is we who will save God, by battling, by creating, and by transmuting matter into spirit.

Sri Chinmoy photo

“A human being has many divine qualities. But there has never been another unparalleled divine quality like man's self-sacrifice, nor can there ever be.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

Songs of the Soul (1971)

Related topics