Henry David Thoreau Quotes on Nature (33 Quotes)

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.

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.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling.

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador a greater wildness than in some recess of Concord.

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and Spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you, know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus you may feel your pulse.

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.

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.

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

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields andwoods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be coldand hungry and weary.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

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.

What I have been preparing to say is this, in wildness is the preservation of the world ... Life consists of wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued by man, its presence refreshes him.... 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. In short, all good things are wild and free.

So high as a tree aspires to grow, so high will it find an atmosphere suited to it.

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

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.

One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul

Our circumstances answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures.

I belive that there is a subtile magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wro

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.

What is a country without rabbits and partridges They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point.

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

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit not a fossil earth, but a living earth compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor.

Talk of mysteries Think of our life in Nature daily to be shown matter, To come in contact with it rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks. The solid earth ...

Life is grand, and so are its environments of Past and Future. Would the face of nature be so serene and beautiful if mans destiny were not equally so.

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, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself.

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

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.

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

Four things to think about. 1. Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. 2. Let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred. 3. Keep three chairs in your house. One for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. 4. To preserve your relationship to nature, make your life more moral, more pure, more innocent.

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