English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets,--Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, included,--breathes no quite fresh and, in this sense, wild strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wildness is a greenwood, her wild man a Robin Hood. There is plenty of genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not the wild man in her, became extinct.
Henry David ThoreauPolitics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves - sometimes split into quarters - which grind on each other. Not only individuals but states have thus a confirmed dyspepsia.
Henry David ThoreauAs long as I have the friendship of the sesasons life will never be a burden to me.
Henry David ThoreauI noticed, as I had done before, that there was a lull among the mosquitoes about midnight, and that they began again in the morning. Nature is thus merciful. But apparently they need rest as well as we.
Henry David Thoreau