Henry David Thoreau Wood Quotations

The most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants.

It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time.

It is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose.

The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact.... In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold.

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,1847.

What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet.

Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.... What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in the woods ...

Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection.

I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.

A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.

You must converse much with the field and the woods if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body

There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all.

I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.

In my walks, I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

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.

He who cuts down woods beyond a certain limit exterminates birds.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.

My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.