Henry David Thoreau Quotes

The real jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot is the prothonotary warbler. ... The flash of his gold-and-blue plumage amid the dank decay of the June woods is in itself proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa.

You cannot begin to preserve any species of animal unless you preserve the habitat in which it dwells. Disturb or destroy that habitat and you will exterminate the species as surely as if you had shot it. So conservation means that we have to preserve forest and grassland, river and lake, even the sea itself. This is vital not only for the preservation of animal life generally, but for the future existence of man himself - a point that seems to escape many people.

The only way to save a rhinoceros is to save the environment in which it lives, because there's a mutual dependency between it and millions of other species of both animals and plants.

Save the elephants, and then you save the forest - and then you save yourself.

This is a truth that should be repeated like a mantra: to have any chance of a ful - filling life, we require not only clean air and a steady climate, but also an abundance of meadows and woodlands, rivers and oceans, teeming with life and the mass existence of other living creatures.

To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago they sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very aspect of those primitive and rugged trees there was, methinks, a tanning principle which hardened and consolidated the fibres of men's thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days of my native village, when you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness, and we no longer produce tar and turpentine.

Hunting, fishing, and trapping is literally perfect. It's the perfect system by which to balance and ground the animal populations for next year's productivity.

Our forests are not for toilet paper. They are worth more standing than cut. That deserves to be defended, not only by native peoples but also by environmentalists.

Penguins are an indicator of the health of our watery planet, and if they are unable to survive, we had better take notice or we might find our own survival threatened.

In a civilized and cultivated country, wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen.

Adult gorillas will fight to the death defending their families. This is why poachers who may be seeking only one infant for the zoo trade must often kill all the adults in the family to capture the baby.

Eating wildlife is probably not the smartest thing that we can do in terms of maintaining the integrity of natural systems.

...recognize and respect Earth's beautiful systems of balance, between the presence of animals on land, the fish in the sea, birds in the air, mankind, water, air, and land. Most importantly there must always be awareness of the actions by people that can disturb this precious balance.

Land health is the capacity for self-renewal in the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise the land.

A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest's conscience, but remember, the forest eats itself and lives forever.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

Man makes very much such a nest for his domestic animals, of withered grass and fodder, as the squirrels and many other wild creatures do for themselves.

Every native species, however humble in appearance...has its place in the nation's heritage. It is a masterpiece of evolution, an ancient, multifaceted entity that shares the land with us.

Dating back to Teddy Roosevelt, hunters have been the pillar of conservation in America, doing more than anyone to conserve wildlife and its habitat.

Love the woods and nature and the water and animals. Stop the BS with poaching and hunting. Preservation is critical.

The animals of the planet are in desperate peril... Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.

I saw that animals were important. I saw that plants were even more important. I was also to learn that compared to many of the other species, we weren't important at all except for the damage we do. We do not rule the natural world, despite our conspicuous position in it. On the contrary, it is our lifeline, and we do well to try to understand its rules.

Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven; one may never get there.

I think the lion, besides the elephant, was the one animal that I just started thinking about so much.

The lower animals are our brethren. I include among them the lion and the tiger. We do not know how to live with these carnivorous beasts and poisonous reptiles because of our ignorance.