"It is in vain to dream of..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
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.
More by Henry David Thoreau
“I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
“What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.”
More on Wilderness
“We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten 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.”
“I should have liked to come across a large community of pines, which had never been invaded by the lumbering army.”
“Not till we are completely lost, or turned round, do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.”