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Henry David Thoreau
There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns ... Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.
Henry David Thoreau
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849
Only when the city, the hamlet, or the cottage is viewed from a distance does man's life seem in harmony with the universe...the sunlight on cities at a distance is a deceptive beauty, but foretells the final harmony of man with Nature.
Henry David Thoreau,
Journal, 1841
But when I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here - the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc. - I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and as it were, emasculated country... I listen to a concert in which so many parts are wanting... for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages...
Henry David Thoreau,
Journal, 1856
A river, with its waterfalls and meadows, a lake, a hill, a cliff or individual rocks, a forest, and ancient trees standing singly ... If the inhabitants of a town were wise, they would seek to preserve these things; for such things educate far more than any hired teachers or preachers, or any present recognized system of school education. I do not think him fit to be the founder of a state or even of a town who does not foresee the use of these things.
Henry David Thoreau,
Journal, 1861
Rivers .... are the natural highways of all nations, not only leveling the ground and removing obstacles from the path of the traveler, quenching his thirst and bearing him on their bosoms, but conducting him through the most interesting scenery, the most populous portions of the globe, and where the animal and vegetable kingdoms attain their greatest perfection.
Henry David Thoreau,
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849
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