Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Wilderness

• I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Believe, Yield

  Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.59, Heron Dance Press

• We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Rain, Clouds, Sight

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.205, Cosimo, Inc.

• I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Cutting, Wish

  Walden ch. 2 (1854)

• In wildness is the preservation of the world.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Camping, World, Transcendentalism

  "Walking" (1862)

• I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Life, Death

  Walden ch. 2 (1854)

• I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Adventure, Dead Poets Society

  Walden ch. 2 (1854)

• All good things are wild and free.

  Henry David Thoreau

  I Hate You, Independence, Liberty

  Henry David Thoreau (2010). “Wild Apples and Other Natural History Essays”, p.82, University of Georgia Press

• The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beautiful, Nature, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.120, Xist Publishing

• We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Adventure, Smell, Needs

• Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, Men, Climbing

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walking: Top Essays”, p.11, 谷月社

• I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dead Poets Society, Transcendentalism, Wilderness

  "Walden: Or, Life in the Woods".

• The Library is a wilderness of books.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Reading, Library

  Henry David Thoreau (1960). “H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal”, p.84, Courier Corporation

• It is a thorough process, this war with the wilderness - breaking nature, taming the soil. feeding it on oats. The civilized man regards the pine tree as his enemy. He will fell it and let in the light, grub it up and raise wheat or rye there. It is no better than a fungus to him.

  Henry David Thoreau

  War, Men, Light

  David R. Foster, Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Thoreau's Country: Journey through a Transformed Landscape”, p.38, Harvard University Press

• I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Practice, Wish, Transcendentalism

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.3143, Delphi Classics

• Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Imagination, Doe

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Maine Woods”, p.93, Graphic Arts Books

• In the wilderness is the salvation of the world.

  Henry David Thoreau

  World, Wilderness, Salvation

• But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines, but fragile flowers, like the orchises, commonly described as too delicate for cultivation, which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass of peat. These remind us, that, not only for strength, but for beauty, the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and the Indian's trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Flower, Simplicity

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.160

• New York has her wilderness within her own borders; and though the sailors of Europe are familiar with the soundings of her Hudson, and Fulton long since invented the steamboat on its waters, an Indian is still necessary to guide her scientific men to its headwaters in the Adirondack country.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, New York, Native American

  Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.299, Macmillan

• I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Men, Earth

  Henry David Thoreau, Joseph O. Valentine, Thoreau Society (2001). “Thoreau on Land: Nature's Canvas”, p.84, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The frontiers are not east or west, north or south; but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be a neighbor, there is anunsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it. Let him build himself a log house with the bark on where he is, fronting IT, and wage there an Old French war for seven or seventy years, with Indians and Rangers, or whatever else may come between him and the reality, and save his scalp if he can.

  Henry David Thoreau

  War, Reality, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.257, Jazzybee Verlag

• Nature has many scenes to exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this part or that. She is constantly repainting the landscape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness; now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will surprise us with a mantle of snow. Some green she thinks so good for our eyes that, like blue, she never banishes it entirely from our eyes, but has created evergreens.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Eye, Winter, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2799, Delphi Classics

• My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ocean, Giving, Desert

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.355, Simon and Schuster

• Though the words Canada East on the map stretch over many rivers and lakes and unexplored wildernesses, the actual Canada, which might be the colored portion of the map, is but a little clearing on the banks of the river, which one of those syllables would more than cover.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Rivers, Lakes, Might

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Yankee in Canada”, p.32, Graphic Arts Books

• Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Cities, Tree

  Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Natural History Essays”, p.112, Gibbs Smith

• The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ocean, Garden, Sea

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.826, Delphi Classics

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