Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I can recall, as a young adult, running through the rain forest at the Forest Reserve, at times feeling a sense of fear when I felt I was in danger. In danger of confronting an ugly snake or a coral snake, which represented the greatest fear of someone in a rural area when you traverse the forest.

I now walk into the wild.

Of all formal things in the world, a clipped hedge is the most formal; and of all the informal things in the world, a forest tree is the most informal.

I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.

Without wilderness, the world's a cage.

Science had married the wilderness and was taming the savage shrew.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally.

I was once walking through the forest alone. A tree fell right in front of me - and I didn't hear it.

A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.

I was the sort of person who didn't care about hairdressing and clothes and parties and boyfriends. I really wanted to be in the wild.

I know it sounds very cliché and not very exciting, but if I'm outdoors - in the wild or the ocean or the forest - it inspires me.

Nature holds no brief for the human experiment; it must stand or fall by its results.

I'm not a city kind of guy. I'm happiest when I'm tromping through the woods.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep but I have promises to keep...

I was born under the Blue Ridge, and under that side which is blue in the evening light, in a wild land of game and forest and rushing waters.

I throw fresh seeds out. Who knows what survives?

The generation of mankind is like the generation of leaves. The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the living tree burgeons with leaves again in the spring.

I ran to the forest, I ran to the trees. I ran and I ran, I was looking for me.

Nothing endures except life: the capacity for birth, growth, and renewal.

You learned in school that you have pencils and paper only because the trees gave themselves in unconditional sacrifice.

What I need is a lawyer who specializes in the law of the jungle.

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World

The turn from this end [despair] to a new beginning came from three things. A blooming cherry tree, the unexpected kindness of Scottish workers and their families, and the Bible.

Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.