“The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a pampered or diseased one.”

—  Henry David Thoreau

December 27, 1857
Journals (1838-1859)

Adopted from Wikiquote. 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 commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the …" by Henry David Thoreau?
Henry David Thoreau photo
Henry David Thoreau385
1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

Related quotes

Richard Dawkins photo

“The popularity of the paranormal, oddly enough, might even be grounds for encouragement. I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which drives the best of true science, and it is an appetite which true science is best qualified to satisfy.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)

Will Self photo

“I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.”

Will Self (1961) English writer and journalist

The Guardian, May 9, 2007. http://books.guardian.co.uk/whyiwrite/story/0,,2075745,00.html#article_continue

Wallace Stevens photo

“Just as my fingers on these keys Make music, so the self-same sounds On my spirit make a music, too. Music is feeling, then, not sound”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Peter Quince at the Clavier (1915)
Context: Just as my fingers on these keys Make music, so the self-same sounds On my spirit make a music, too. Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,
Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music.

Pierre Schaeffer photo

“Music has to do with sounds, so we need to find them somewhere and it is preferred to find musical ones. You have two sources for sounds: noises, which always tell you something — a door cracking, a dog barking, the thunder, the storm; and then you have instruments. An instrument tells you, 'la-la-la-la.' Music has to find a passage between noises and instruments. It has to escape. It has to find a compromise and an evasion at the same time; something that would not be dramatic because that has no interest to us, but something that would be more interesting than sounds like Do-Re-Mi-Fa…”

Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995) French musicologist

Electronic Musician magazine, December 1986
Interviews

Anthony Trollope photo

“Don't let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.”

Anthony Trollope book Barchester Towers

Source: Barchester Towers (1857), Ch. 38

Kate DiCamillo photo

“Reader, nothing is sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name. Nothing.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Variant: Reader, nothing is sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name. Nothing.
Source: The Tale of Despereaux (2004)

Leo Tolstoy photo

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)

George Gordon Byron photo

“I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Maryanne Amacher photo

“When played at the right sound level, which is quite high and exciting, the tones in this music will cause your ears to act as neurophonic instruments that emit sounds that will seem to be issuing directly from your head.”

Maryanne Amacher (1938–2009) Composer and installation artist

Amacher, 1999, cited in: Franziska Schroeder (2006). Bodily instruments and instrumental bodies. Vol. 25. p. 74:
Description of how "ears act as instruments and emit sounds as well as receive them (Amacher, 1999)... [and] the way these 'otoacoustic emissions' might function."

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“The sweeter sound of woman’s praise.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Lines written in August, 1847

Related topics