WIST Quotations

Thoreau, Henry David -- Walden; or, Life in the Woods, ch. 17 “Spring” (1854)

Dave — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 17:49:58 +0000

Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) American philosopher and writer
Walden; or, Life in the Woods, ch. 17 “Spring” (1854)

Byron, George Gordon, Lord -- Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 4, st. 179 (1818)

Dave — Mon, 19 May 2025 20:03:08 +0000

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin — his control
Stops with the shore.

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824) English poet
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 4, st. 179 (1818)

Davies, Robertson -- The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, ch. 20 (1947)

Dave — Tue, 18 May 2021 16:54:55 +0000

Perhaps God made cats so that man might have the pleasure of fondling the tiger ….

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian author, editor, publisher
The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, ch. 20 (1947)

Brault, Robert -- (Attributed)

Dave — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 15:20:50 +0000

What we find in a soulmate is not something wild to tame, but something wild to run with.

Robert Brault (b. c. 1945) American aphorist, programmer
(Attributed)

Oliver, Mary -- “The Summer Day,” New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1 (1992)

Dave — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 16:12:37 +0000

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American poet
“The Summer Day,” New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1 (1992)

Stevenson, Robert Louis -- Essay (1878-03), “Crabbed Age and Youth,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 37

Dave — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 17:09:23 +0000

It is as natural and as right for a young man to be imprudent and exaggerated, to live in swoops and circles, and beat about his cage like any other wild thing newly captured, as it is for old men to turn grey, or mothers to love their offspring, or heroes to die for something more valuable than their lives.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1878-03), “Crabbed Age and Youth,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 37

Collected in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, ch. 2 (1881).