Henry David Thoreau was a influential writer of early American Literature who spent years living an experiment. Inspired by his friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau gave up his Harvard lifestyle, and moved into a shack by a pond in the New England wilderness. You might say he started the "getting back to the land" movement. He spent his time contemplating the natural world around him. Some of Thoreau best writings describe the profound pleasures of a simple lifestyle.

"An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day."

"Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary."

"There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.

"In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex ..."

"Truly, our greatest blessings are very cheap."

"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."

"God did not make this world in jest; no, nor in indifference."

"Men obey their call and go to the stove-warmed church, though God exhibits himself to the walker in a frosted bush today as much as in a burning one to Moses of old."

"My profession is to be always on the alert find God in nature, to know His lurking places, to attend all the oratories, the operas, in Nature. To watch for, describe, all the divine features which I detect in Nature."

"If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen."(2)

Green Forest

Orchard Flowers

More interesting insights on Nature

Learn more about the Writings of Thoreau

Learn more about the Writings of Emerson

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