Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Nature
Seeing at that moment three little red birds fly out of a crevice in the ruins, up into an arbor-vitae tree, which grew out of them, I asked him their names, in such French as I could muster, but he neither understood me or ornithology . . .—A Yankee in Canada
Simple arithmetic might have corrected it; for the life of every man has, after all, an epic integrity, and Nature adapts herself to our weakness and deficiencies as well as talents.—Journal, 1845-47
Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs.—Walden
So vivacious is redness. The very rails reflect a rosy light at this hour and season. You see a redder tree than exists.—"Autumnal Tints"
The forest looked like a firm grass sward, and the effect of these lakes in its midst has been well compared, by one who has since visited this same spot, to that of a "mirror broken into a thousand fragments, and wildly scattered over the grass, reflecting the full blaze of the sun."—The Maine Woods
The great and solitary heart will love alone, without the knowledge of its object. It cannot have society in its love. It will expend its love as the cloud drops rain upon the fields over which [it] floats.—Journal, 15 March 1842
The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it.—Walden
The Scarlet Oak asks a clear sky and the brightness of late October days. These bring out its colors.—"Autumnal Tints"
The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
There are odors enough in nature to remind you of everything if you had lost every sense but smell.—Journal, 6 May 1852
