"My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
To be awake is to be alive.
More Henry David Thoreau quotes
"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...
"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 is life near the bone where it is sweetest.
"He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.
"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.
"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...
"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...
"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...
"The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
"The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance o...
"Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.