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By space the Universe encompasses and swallows me as an atom, by thought I encompass it.

Moreover, the many dead trunks that stand like skeletons, never fail to give to these primeval woods a character of solemnity, absent in those of countries long civilized.

This west coast makes me remember with pleasure the free, unbounded plains of Patagonia; yet, with the true spirit of contradiction, I cannot forget how sublime is the silence of the forest.

Sitting down on a block of granite, it was delightful to watch the various insects and birds as they flew past.

Delight itself, however, is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who, for the first time, has wandered by himself in a Brazilian forest.

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in.

On this bit of the wild world's stage are theatrical lightning changes of scenes—changes that on most mountains would require ten thousand years or more. It is a place of strange and fleeting landscapes; the earth is ever changing like the sky.

The forest is an eternal mediator between winds and gravity in their never-ending struggle for the possession of the waters.

Lastly, and possibly most important, forests make this earth comfortable and beautiful. Next to the soil, they are the most useful and helpful of Nature's agencies.

During this night journey I put myself both in feeling and in fact in a blind man's place—the best lesson I ever had to develop deliberation and keenness of touch.

Have you anything better or greater to see than the sun, the moon, the stars, the whole earth, the sea?

Human effort is not futile, but man fights against the giant forces of Nature in a spirit of humility.

My world is built of touch-sensations, devoid of physical colour and sound; but without colour and sound it breathes and throbs with life.

Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.

The man who doubts it, can never have watched the first gleams of tenderness dawning in the clear eyes of one who loves; sunrise itself is a lesser marvel.

depend upon it, you will love your native hills the better for being separated from them

The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!

Now at least the moon is full, and I walk alone, which is best by night, if not by day always.

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

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children.

In society you will not find health, but in nature.

The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature.

Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

Entomology extends the limits of being in a new direction, so that I walk in nature with a sense of greater space and freedom.

To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.