Top 48 Thoreau Woods Quotes
#1. When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter as a sacred place, a Sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature.
Henry David Thoreau
#2. There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all.
Henry David Thoreau
#3. I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me.
Henry David Thoreau
#4. I'll go live in the woods," said Malone.
"You'll be lonely," said Sutherland. "Even Thoreau went to town in the afternoon to gossip.
Andrew Holleran
#5. One large bundle held their all - bed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens - all but the cat; she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last.
Henry David Thoreau
#9. The trees show definitions of themselves subtly like the face of a man.
Daniel J. Rice
#10. it is remarkable that the wild apple, which I praise as so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields or woods, being brought into the house, has frequently a harsh and crabbed taste. The Saunter-er's Apple not even the saunterer can eat in the house.
Henry David Thoreau
#11. I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.
Henry David Thoreau
#12. A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,
a denizen of the woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him.
Henry David Thoreau
#13. I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.
Henry David Thoreau
#14. But, on more accounts than one, I had had enough of moose-hunting. I had not come to the woods for this purpose, nor had I foreseen it, though I had been willing to learn how the Indian manvred; but one moose killed was as good, if not as bad, as a dozen.
Henry David Thoreau
#15. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.
Henry David Thoreau
#16. Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now.
Henry David Thoreau
#17. Sometimes you have to leave the world in order to learn how to live in it. Thoreau shunned society, went to the woods, and came back with a new understanding of life.
Henry David Thoreau
#18. You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.
Henry David Thoreau
#19. I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.
Henry David Thoreau
#20. Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,1847.
Henry David Thoreau
#21. On the morning of many a first spring day ... the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead. There needs no stronger proof of immortality.
Henry David Thoreau
#22. Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.
Henry David Thoreau
#23. It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in the woods ...
Henry David Thoreau
#24. Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats.
Chris Matakas
#25. Think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.
Henry David Thoreau
#28. The most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants.
Henry David Thoreau
#29. It is too late in the day-there are simply too many of us now-to follow Thoreau into the woods, to look to nature to somehow cure or undo culture.
Michael Pollan
#30. Beauty is where it is perceived. When I see the sun shinning on the woods across the pond, I think this side the richer which sees it.
Henry David Thoreau
#31. A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earnedin the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours.
Henry David Thoreau
#32. Let a slight snow come and cover the earth, and the tracks of men will show how little the woods and fields are frequented.
Henry David Thoreau
#34. Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.
Henry David Thoreau
#35. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit ... What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?
Henry David Thoreau
#36. You must converse much with the field and the woods if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body
Henry David Thoreau
#37. If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a spectulator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
Henry David Thoreau
#38. Then at night the general stillness is more impressive than any sound, but occasionally you hear the note of an owl farther or nearer in the woods, and if near a lake, the semihuman cry of the loons at their unearthly revels.
Henry David Thoreau
#39. The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact ... In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold.
Henry David Thoreau
#40. A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it, than by the woods and swamps that surround it.
Henry David Thoreau
#41. The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in the horizon may have first suggested the notes of the hunting-horn to alternate with and relieve the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded in the woods of the ancient world before the horn was invented.
Henry David Thoreau
#43. As for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere. I had more visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other period of my life; I mean that I had some.
Henry David Thoreau
#44. One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.
Henry David Thoreau
#45. When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring sight.
Henry David Thoreau
#46. The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there.
Henry David Thoreau
#47. It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time.
Henry David Thoreau
#48. The outside is the only place we can truly be inside the world.
Daniel J. Rice
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