Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Nature's my muse and it's been my passion.

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet, Long live the weeds and the wildness yet.

Everybody deserves a chance to be in nature.

I do love the outdoor. Love love the outdoors, fishing and hunting and that kind of thing.

I recycle and try to be nice to the earth. But flora and fauna have always interested me, and it is because of so many years of summer camp and growing up in DC with Rock Creek Park fairly near me, or Glover Park; I lived in Glover Park for a while and that park was in my backyard.

Wildness is not just the "preservation of the world," it is the world

When we return wild animals to nature, we merely return them to what is already theirs. For man cannot give wild animals freedom, they can only take it away.

I cannot imagine my hometown without forests, and I cannot imagine the earth turned into a desert.

All I want to do is to present the abundance of life on Earth.

Hunting is alive and well, and so it should be.

Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild is an exquisite, far-sighted articulation of what freedom, wildness, goodness, and grace mean, using the lessons of the planet to teach us how to live.

How much wilderness do the wilderness-lovers want? ask those who would mine and dig and cut and dam in such sanctuary spots as these. The answer is easy: Enough so that there will be in the years ahead a little relief, a little quiet, a little relaxation, for any of our increasing millions who need and want it.

Nature is where I feel most comfortable; it's where I find my balance. I would like my kids and all future generations to have the chance to experience nature as I did.

The wilderness and the idea of wilderness is one of the permanent homes of the human spirit.

May this continent, the last explored by humankind, be the first one to be spared by humankind.

. . . perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters . . . glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.

Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow. Invasions can be arrested or modified in a manner to keep an area usable either for recreation, science or for wildlife, but the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible. It follows, then, that any wilderness program is a rearguard action, through which retreats are reduced to a minimum.

To this day, I enjoy nature, the luxury of undisturbed wilderness, forests, mountains, lakes, rivers and deserts and their wildlife. But I also know that the greatest danger to their perpetuity is the pressure of human population.

What would human life be without forests, those natural cities?

Our relationship to the environment matters, our relationship to animals matters, and our relationship to culture matters.

There are a great many people who are in favor of conservation no matter what it means.

The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.

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.