"The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see forms stretching in frolic gambols across the d...

He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.
~ Henry David Thoreau ~












He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.
More Henry David Thoreau quotes
"No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to b...
"What is human warfare but just this an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
"It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
"For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully though I never received one cent for it.
"Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
"What are these pines & these birds about? What is this pond a-doing? I must know a little more.
"When I would recreate myself I seek the darkest wood the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a...
"Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
"To be awake is to be alive.
"I have spent many an hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my b...
"The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard
"I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree or a yellow birch or an old acquaintance a...
"Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it...
"The bluebird carries the sky on his back.