Henry David Thoreau Nature Quotations

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

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 days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

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 of time.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveler, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness.

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal -- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation . . .

We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; -- for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. -- Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.

If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

The indescribable innocence of and beneficence of Nature,-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter,-such health, such cheer, they afford forever!

In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.

The voice of nature is always encouraging.

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

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.

The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.

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.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

If Nature is our mother, then God is our father.

In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,--not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!

My profession is to always find God in nature.

This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beechtree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas in nature.

The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.

It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World

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.

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.

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

Nature spontaneously keeps us well. Do not resist her!

A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

I have a room all to myself; it is nature.

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

No domain of nature is quite closed to man at all times.

There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.

Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer.

The next day the Indian told me their name for this light,--artoosoq',--and on my inquiring concerning the will-o'-the-wisp, and the like phenomena, he said that his "folks" sometimes saw fires passing along at various heights, even as high as the trees, and making a noise. I was prepared after this to hear of the most startling and unimagined phenomena, witnessed by "his folks"; they are abroad at all hours and seasons in scenes so unfrequented by white men. Nature must have made a thousand revelations to them which are still secrets to us.

Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,--not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,--and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.

We could not help contrasting the equanimity of Nature with the bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions presume alwaysa crisis near at hand, but she is forever silent and unpretending.

The young pines springing up in the corn-fields from year to year are to me a refreshing fact.

Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.

In all her products, Nature only develops her simplest germs. One would say that it was no great stretch of invention to create birds. The hawk which now takes his flight over the top of the wood was at first, perchance, only a leaf which fluttered in its aisles. From rustling leaves she came in the course of ages to the loftier flight and clear carol of the bird.

All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health orsound state.

This world has many rings, like Saturn, and we live now on the outmost of them all. None can say deliberately that he inhabits thesame sphere, or is contemporary, with the flower which his hands have plucked, and though his feet may seem to crush it, inconceivable spaces and ages separate them, and perchance there is no danger that he will hurt it.

Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature's laws are more immutable than any despot's, yet to man's daily life they rarelyseem rigid, but permit him to relax with license in summer weather. He is not harshly reminded of the things he may not do.

Very few men can speak of Nature, for instance, with any truth. They overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer no favor.They do not speak a good word for her. Most cry better than they speak, and you can get more nature out of them by pinching than by addressing them. The surliness with which the woodchopper speaks of his woods, handling them as indifferently as his axe, is better than the mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of nature. Better that the primrose by the river's brim be a yellow primrose, and nothing more, than that it be something less.

Commerce is really as interesting as nature.

By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every island is made! What an enterprise of nature thus to lay the foundations of and to build up the future continent, of golden and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like industry.

By one bait or another, Nature allures inhabitants into all her recesses.

Whether we live by the seaside, or by the lakes and rivers, or on the prarie, it concerns us to attend to the nature of fishes, since they are not phenomena confined to certain localities only, but forms and phases of the life in nature universally dispersed. The countless shoals which annually coast the shores of Europe and America are not so interesting to the student of nature as the more fertile law itselffrom which it results that they may be found in water in so many places, in greater or lesser numbers.

When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am glad to find that nature wears so well. The landscape is indeed something real, and solid, and sincere, and I have not put my foot through it yet.

We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men's necessities, while elsewhereshe was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim's shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell.

The lichen on the rocks is a rude and simple shield which beginning and imperfect Nature suspended there. Still hangs her wrinkledtrophy.

As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiencesof the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside of time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.

Nature seemed to have adorned herself for our departure with a profusion of fringes and curls, mingled with the bright tints of flowers, reflected in the water. But we missed the white water-lily, which is the queen of river flowers, its reign being over for this season.... Many of this species inhabit our Concord water.

Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.

It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.

The chickadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more vulgar companions.

Probably if our lives were more conformed to nature, we should not need to defend ourselves against her heats and colds, but findher our constant nurse and friend, as do plants and quadrupeds.

For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle. What a coarse and imperfect use Indiansand hunters make of nature! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated.

There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man.

Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light,--to see its perfect success; but most are content to behold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market, and deem that its true success! But the pine is no more lumber than man is, and to be made into boards and houses is no more its true and highest use than the truest use of a man is to be cut down and made into manure.

Nature is goodness crystallized.

Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.

Nature is mythical and mystical always, and works with the license and extravagance of genius. She has her luxurious and florid style as well as art.

To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.

In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influencewhich flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.

How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.

How meanly and grossly do we deal with nature!

I noticed, as I had done before, that there was a lull among the mosquitoes about midnight, and that they began again in the morning. Nature is thus merciful. But apparently they need rest as well as we.

Making a logging-road in the Maine woods is called "swamping" it, and they who do the work are called "swampers." I now perceivedthe fitness of the term. This was the most perfectly swamped of all the roads I ever saw. Nature must have coöperated with art here.

For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their affairs indifferent.

Even Nature is observed to have her playful moods or aspects, of which man sometimes seems to be the sport.

Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any naturalobject, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of nature and has his senses still.

Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her.

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.

For if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men?

In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round,--for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,--do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature.

The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.

Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved bythem. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.

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.

The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.

The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.

There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.

The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.

I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe.