Henry David Thoreau Environmental Quotations

We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.

We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

Who ever saw his old clothes, - his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.

It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went.

Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.