“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” 
~ W.H. Auden

Thoreau did not write much memorable poetry. He did however keep a journal that contains some of the best “prose poetry” that has ever been written.

In an effort to rekindle my own creative fires, I have been rereading Thoreau. Today’s quotes come from Thoreau’s Journals.

Books and wilderness are two of my favorite subjects. They are at the heart of many of my own poems and favorite memories.

Enjoy! 

A few quotes from Thoreau’s Journals

 

ON LITERATURE & WILDERNESS
In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is only another name for tameness. It is the untamed, uncivilized, free, and wild thinking in Hamlet, in the Iliad, and in all the scriptures and mythologies that delights us,— not learned in the schools, not refined and polished by art. A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvellous…

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ON WILDERNESS
What shall we do with a man who is afraid of the woods, their solitude and darkness? What salvation is there for him? God is silent and mysterious.