Henry David Thoreau Quotations: NATURE & THE ENVIRONMENT
The hawk is the aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.—Walden
The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it.—Walden
The most alive is the wildest.—"Walking"
The Scarlet Oak asks a clear sky and the brightness of late October days. These bring out its colors.—"Autumnal Tints"
The sharp whistle of the blackbird, too, is heard like single sparks or a shower of them shot up from the swamps and seen against the dark winter in the rear.—Journal, 2 March 1859
The trees now in the rain look heavy and rich all day, as commonly at twilight, drooping with the weight of wet leaves.—Journal, 17 July 1852
The very willow-rows lopped every three years for fuel or powder,—and every sizable pine and oak, or other forest tree, cut down within the memory of man! As if individual speculators were to be allowed to export the clouds out of the sky, or the stars out of the firmament, one by one. We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment.—The Maine Woods
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
The wood still cheerfully and unsuspiciously echoes the strokes of the axe that fells it, and while they are few and seldom, they enhance its wildness, and all the elements strive to naturalize the sound.—"A Winter Walk"
The wood-thrush sang on the distant shore, and the laugh of some loons, sporting in a concealed western bay, as if inspired by morning, came distinct over the lake to us, and, what was remarkable, the echo which ran round the lake was much louder than the original note; probably because, the loons being in a regularly curving bay under the mountain, we were exactly in the focus of many echoes, the sound being reflected like light from a concave mirror.—The Maine Woods
