Quote

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.

Henry David Thoreau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Greater
Distant
Wilds
Nature
Brains
Bogs
Dream
Primitive
Concord
Find
Vain
Bowels
Never
Inspire
Recess
None
Wildness
Shall
Vigor
Brain
Inspires
Labrador

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
There is one thought for the field, another for the house. I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Let us consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we pronounce thus confidently on her progress.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, andagain, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?
Henry David Thoreau
Image
To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that hein some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The front aspect of great thoughts can only be enjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they arrive.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Invariably our best nights were those when it rained.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Fame itself is but an epitaph as late, as false, as true.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.
Henry David Thoreau