“A journal is a record of experiences and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said.”

“For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once done well is done forever.”

“Wildness is the preservation of the World.”

“If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.”

“The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in the Wildness is the preservation of the World.”

“Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.”

“Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it. ”