Henry David Thoreau Quotes

The appeal of the wild for me is its unpredictability. You have to develop an awareness, react fast, be resourceful and come up with a plan and act on it.

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway."

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.

Today the world is a big jungle.

Anyone who has spent a few nights in a tent during a storm can tell you: The world doesn't care all that much if you live or die.

I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.

It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.

I'm me, I live from film to mouth.

Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

The sea has neither meaning nor pity.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

The pure air and dazzling snow belong to things beyond the reach of all personal feeling, almost beyond the reach of life. Yet such things are a part of our life, neither the least noble nor the most terrible.

Nature is not human hearted.

I practically lived in the woods when I was a kid, avoiding grown-ups and my dysfunctional family, pretending I was half-wolf, a feral child who napped in nests made out of ferns, ate wild blueberries, and wove sticks and feathers into her hair.

Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.

… nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving

Nature—pitiless in a pitiless universe—is certainly not concerned with the survival of Americans or, for that matter, of any of the two billion people now inhabiting the earth.

It's why real men just go out in the woods and howl. I must do it and get paid.

Humans are the big thing that cause damage in life - in war or whatever - and if I can get away from that and into a wilderness situation, I'm OK. You can more or less live on your own merit.

Yeah, I like going away for camp. It brings out the savagery.

Traditional westerns typify some of the hardships men face: you have to be rugged, silent, stoic. It's a man against nature, against the world.