I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) American philosopher and writer
Walden; or, Life in the Woods, ch. 2 “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” (1854)
(Source)
Quotations about:
woods
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Nature,” ch. 1, Nature: Addresses and Lectures (1849)
(Source)
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824) English poet
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 4, st. 178 (1818)
(Source)
They walked on, thinking of This and That, and by-and-by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of the Forest called Galleons Lap, which is sixty-something trees in a circle; and Christopher Robin knew it was enchanted because nobody had ever been able to count whether it was sixty-three or sixty-four.
A. A. Milne (1882–1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
House at Pooh Corner, ch. 10 “An Enchanted Place” (1928)
(Source)
