"Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water."
Woods quotes
404 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside woods — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Have you ever noticed how quiet you get when you go in the woods? It's almost like you know that God's there."
"The world that used to nurse us now keeps shouting inane instructions. That's why I ran to the woods."
"Come to the woods, for here is rest."
"Going into the woods, is going home"
"Today, we must realize that nature is revealed in the simplest meadow, wood lot, marsh, stream, or tidepool, as well as in the remote grandeur of our parks and wilderness areas."
"Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods."
"When you chop wood, splinters fly"
"The brassy wood-pigeons Bubble their colourful voices, and the sun Rises upon a world well-tried and old."
"Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood."
"All flowers talk to me and so do hundreds of little living things in the woods. I learn what I know by watching and loving everything."
"Come down off the cross, we could use the wood."
"Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods."
"Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions."
"Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path. How hard it is to tell what it was like, this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn (the thought of it brings back all my old fears), a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer. But if I would show the good that came of it I must talk about things other than the good."
"The wood was better before I cut it, than after. I did not improve it in any way."
"It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks."
"Rotten wood cannot be carved."
"There is no better way to know us Than as two wolves, come separately to a wood."
"What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet."
"In what bold relief stand out the lives of all walkers of the snow! The snow is a great tell-tale, and blabs as effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his neighbor, the fact is chronicled."