Fig. 2. Crayon portrait (1854) by Samuel Worcester Rowse. Reproduced from The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau. The Walden Woods Project Collection at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods. Courtesy of the Walden Woods Project.
You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.
Written November 18, 1857, in his Journal, vol. X, p. 188
There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate,—not a grain more. The actual objects which one man will see from a particular hill-top are just as different from those which another will see as the beholders are different.
“Autumnal Tints” in Excursions, p. 256
The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper.
Walden, p. 38
How much of beauty—of color, as well as form—on which our eyes daily rest goes unperceived by us!
Written August 1, 1860, in his Journal, vol. XIV, p. 3
There are meteorologists—but who keeps a record of the fairer sunsets? While men are recording the direction of the wind they neglect to record the beauty of the sunset or the rain bow.
Written June 28, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 161
Some love beauty, and some love rum.
Written January 22, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 423
Enough for the season is the beauty thereof. Spring has a beauty of its own which we would not exchange for that of summer.
Written March 23, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 76
In what book is this world and its beauty described? Who has plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty?
Written October 4, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 371
The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds. The eyes were not made for such grovelling uses as they are now put to and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. May we not see God?
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 382
All the world reposes in beauty to him who preserves equipoise in his life, and moves serenely on his path without secret violence; as he who sails down a stream, he has only to steer, keeping his bark in the middle, and carry it round the falls.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 317
The forms of beauty fall naturally around the path of him who is in the performance of his proper work; as the curled shavings drop from the plane, and borings cluster round the auger.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 318
I was inclined to think that the truest beauty was that which surrounded us but which we failed to discern, that the forms and colors which adorn our daily life, not seen afar in the horizon, are our fairest jewelry.
Written September 18, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 166
Always the line of beauty is a curve.
“The Service” in Reform Papers, p. 6
Every landscape which is dreary enough has a certain beauty to my eyes.
Cape Cod, p. 25
Why not take more elevated and broader views, walk in the great garden, not skulk in a little “debauched” nook of it? consider the beauty of the forest, and not merely of a few impounded herbs?
“Autumnal Tints” in Excursions, p. 256
The beauty of the earth answers exactly to your demand and appreciation.
Written November 2, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 278
Beauty is where it is perceived.
Written December 16, 1840, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 205
To him who contemplates a trait of natural beauty no harm nor disappointment can come.
“Natural History of Massachusetts” in Excursions, p. 5
I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me. Very significant are the flight of geese and the migration of suckers, etc., etc. But when I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here,—the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc.,—I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country. Would not the motions of those larger and wilder animals have been more significant still? Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature that I am conversant with?
Written March 23, 1856, in his Journal, vol. VIII, pp. 220–221
The very dogs & cats incline to affection in their relation to man. It oft en happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being. What bond is it relates us to any animal we keep in the house but the bond of affection? In a degree we grow to love one another.
Written April 29, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 210
I see a fox run across the road in the twilight.… I feel a certain respect for him, because, though so large, he still maintains himself free and wild in our midst, and is so original so far as any resemblance to our race is concerned. Perhaps I like him better than his tame cousin the dog for it.
Written November 25, 1857, in his Journal, vol. X, p. 206
The fox seems to get his living by industry and perseverance.
Written February 2, 1860, in his Journal, vol. XIII, p. 124
The musk-rat is the beaver of the settled States.
“Natural History of Massachusetts” in Excursions, p. 13
The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? Why have no tail to speak of?
The Maine Woods, p. 115
The bees are on the pistillate flowers of the early willows,—the honey-bee, a smaller fly-like bee with very transparent wings & bright yellow marks on the abdomen, and also a still smaller bee more like the honey bee. They all hum like summer.
Written April 25, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 491
Yet what is the character of our gratitude to these squirrels, these planters of forests? We regard them as vermin, and annually shoot and destroy them in great numbers, because—if we have any excuse—they sometimes devour a little of our Indian corn.… Would it [not] be far more civilized and humane, not to say godlike, to recognize once in the year by some significant symbolical ceremony the part which the squirrel plays, the great service it performs, in the economy of the universe?
Written October 22, 1860, in his Journal, vol. XIV, p. 166
Every man says his dog will not touch you. Look out nevertheless.
Written July 23, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 241
The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones.… When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it; and when at last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away.
Walden, pp. 225–226
I am not offended by the odor of the skunk in passing by sacred places. I am invigorated rather.
Written after April 26, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 62
Whether a man’s work be hard or easy, whether he be happy or unhappy, a bird is appointed to sing to a man while he is at his work.
Written April 15, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 144
My life at this moment is like a summer morning when birds are singing.
Written February 9, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 262
Birds are the truest heralds of the seasons, since they appreciate a thousand delicate changes in the atmosphere which is their own element, of which man and the other animals cannot be aware.
Passage omitted from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers as published in Linck C. Johnson, Thoreau’s Complex Weave, p. 472
Though I live in the woods I am not so attentive an observer of birds as I was once, but am satisfied if I get an occasional night of sound from them.
To Horatio Robinson Storer, February 15, 1847, while living at Walden, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 175
In Boston yesterday an ornithologist said significantly—“if you held the bird in your hand”—but I would rather hold it in my affections.
Written May 10, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 111
He who cuts down woods beyond a certain limit exterminates birds.
Written May 17, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 6, p. 134
The blue bird carries the sky on his back.
Written April 3, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 423
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
Walden, p. 276
I rejoice that there are owls.… They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have.
Walden, p. 124
I hear an owl hoot. How glad I am to hear him rather than the most eloquent man of the age!
Written December 25, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 378
I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more,—the same sweet and powerful song as of yore. O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day!
Walden, p. 312
The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever!… What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations?
Walden, p. 310
I hear part of a phoebe’s strain as I go over the railroad bridge—It is the voice of dying summer.
Written August 26, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 295
A man’s interest in a single blue-bird, is more than a complete, but dry, list of the fauna & flora of a town.
To Daniel Ricketson, November 22, 1858, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 528
How much more habitable a few birds make the fields! At the end of winter, when the fields are bare and there is nothing to relieve the monotony of the withered vegetation, our life seems reduced to its lowest terms. But let a bluebird come and warble over them, and what a change!
Written March 18, 1858, in his Journal, vol. X, p. 302
It is surprising that so many birds find hair enough to line their nests with. If I wish for a horse hair for my compass sights I must go to the stable but the hair bird with her sharp eyes goes to the road.
Written June 24, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 6, p. 243
If you would have the song of the sparrow inspire you a thousand years hence, let your life be in harmony with its strain to-day.
Written May 12, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 364
As I come over the hill I hear the wood thrush singing his evening lay. This is the only bird whose note affects me like music—affects the flow & tenor of my thought—my fancy & imagination. It lifts and exhilarates me. It is inspiring. It is a medicative draught to my soul. It is an elixir to my eyes & a fountain of youth to all my senses. It changes all hours to an eternal morning.
Written June 22, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 6, pp. 235–236
What a perfectly New England sound is this voice of the crow! If you stand perfectly still anywhere in the outskirts of the town and listen, stilling the almost incessant hum of your own personal factory, this is perhaps the sound which you will be most sure to hear rising above all sounds of human industry and leading your thoughts to some far bay in the woods where the crow is venting his disgust. This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge. It sees a race pass away, but it passes not away. It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.
Written March 4, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, pp. 11–12
The tinkling notes of gold-finches & bobolinks which we hear now a days are of one character & peculiar to the season. They are not voluminous flowers but rather nuts of sound, ripened seeds of sound.
Written August 10, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 260
Would it not be well to carry a spy glass in order to watch these shy birds—such as ducks & hawks? In some respects methinks it would be better than a gun. The latter brings them nearer dead, but the former, alive. You can identify the species better by killing the bird because it was a dead specimen that was minutely described but you can study the habits & appearance best in the living specimen.
Written March 29, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 6, p. 48
Saw a tanager in Sleepy hollow. It most takes the eye of any bird. You here have the red-wing reversed—the deepest scarlet of the red-wing spread over the whole body—not on the wing coverts merely while the wings are black. It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves.
Written May 20, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 6, p. 139
The thrush alone declares the immortal wealth & vigor that is in the forest.… Whenever a man hears it he is young & nature is in her spring.… He deepens the significance of all things seen in the light of his strain. He sings to make men take higher and truer views of things.
Written July 5, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 188
The strains of the aeolian harp & of the wood thrush are the truest & loft iest preachers that I know now left on this earth. I know of no missionaries to us heathen comparable to them.
Written December 31, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 7, p. 216
Who hears the fishes when they cry?
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 37
I am the wiser in respect to all knowledges, and the better qualified for all fortunes, for knowing that there is a minnow in the brook.
“Natural History of Massachusetts” in Excursions, p. 17
Go where we will, we discover infinite change in particulars only, not in generals.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 124
We are independent of the change we detect.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 128
I confess, that practically speaking, when I have learned a man’s real disposition, I have no hopes of changing it for the better or worse in this state of existence.
Walden, pp. 120–121
When my thoughts are sensible of change, I love to see and sit on rocks which I have known, and pry into their moss, and see unchangeableness so established.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 351
All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.
Walden, p. 11
I heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer asked him if he did not want the world to be changed; but he answered with a chuckle of surprise in his Canadian accent, not knowing that the question had ever been entertained before, “No, I like it well enough.”
On Alex Therien, the Canadian woodchopper, in Walden, p. 148
The higher the mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no change.
To H.G.O. Blake, February 27, 1853, in Familiar Letters, pp. 210–211
With regard to essentials, I have never had occasion to change my mind.
To H.G.O. Blake, August 18, 1857, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 491
To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery. Who chains me to this dull town?
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 196
In vain I look for change abroad,
And can no difference find,
Till some new ray of peace uncalled
Illumes my inmost mind.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 295
Perhaps an instinct survives through the intensest actual love, which prevents entire abandonment and devotion, and makes the most ardent lover a little reserved. It is the anticipation of change.
“Love” in Early Essays and Miscellanies, p. 269
It will be perceived that there are two kinds of change—that of the race & that of the individual within the limits of the former.
Written June 7, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 246
Action from principle,—the perception and the performance of right,—changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with any thing which was.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 72
So is all change for the better, like birth and death which convulse the body.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 74
Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me.
Walden, pp. 192–193
If I could convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied with men as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in some respects, to my requisitions and expectations of what they and I ought to be, then, like a good Mussulman and fatalist, I should endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are, and say it is the will of God. And, above all, there is this difference between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist this with some effect; but I cannot expect, like Orpheus, to change the nature of the rocks and trees and beasts.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 85
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Walden, p. 90
Th ings do not change; we change.
Walden, p. 328
A man is not to be measured by the virtue of his described actions or the wisdom of his expressed thoughts merely, but by that free character he is, and is felt to be, under all circumstances.
“Sir Walter Raleigh” in Early Essays and Miscellanies, p. 216
We falsely attribute to men a determined character—putting together all their yesterdays and averaging them—we presume to know them. Pity the man who has a character to support.
Written April 28, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 305
The chief want, in every State that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants.
“Life without Principle” in Reform Papers, p. 177
Of what consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion?
“Life without Principle” in Reform Papers, p. 170
It is an important difference between two characters that the one is satisfied with a happy but level success but the other as constantly elevates his aim. Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle it is, as it were, redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already.
Written after January 10, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, pp. 177–178
Talent only indicates a depth of character in some direction.
Written February 18, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 267
Manners are conscious. Character is unconscious.
Written February 16, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 195
The Gods have given man no constant gift but the power and liberty to act greatly.
“Sir Walter Raleigh” second draft manuscript (Walden Woods Project Collection at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods)
We should make our notch every day on our characters as Robinson Crusoe on his stick. We must be at the helm at least once a day—we must feel the tiller rope in our hands, and know that if we sail, we steer.
Written February 22, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 271
I observe that the New York Herald advertises situations wanted by “respectable young women” by the column—but never by respectable young men—rather “intelligent” and “smart” ones—from which I infer that the public opinion of New York does not require young men to be respectable in the same sense in which it requires young women to be so.
Written April 30, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, pp. 211–212
Do you not feel the fruit of your spring & summer beginning to ripen, to harden its seed within you—Do not your thoughts begin to acquire consistency as well as flavor & ripeness—How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed time of character?
Written August 7, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, pp. 256–257
Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire whether in warm or in cold weather by day or by night dragging an engine at their heels, I am astonished to perceive how good a purpose the love of excitement is made to serve. What other force pray—what offered pay—what disinterested neighborliness could ever effect so much?…
There is no old man or woman dropping into the grave but covets excitement.
Written June 5, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 81
Most men can be easily transplanted from here there, for they have so little root—no tap root—or their roots penetrate so little way that you can thrust a shovel quite under them and take them up roots and all.
Written May 14, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 58
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
Walden, pp. 14–15
How oft en are we wise as serpents without being harmless as doves.
Written February 9, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 185
It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always. The conscience really does not, and ought not to, monopolize the whole of our lives, any more than the heart or the head. It is as liable to disease as any other part. I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 74
The world rests on principles.
To H.G.O. Blake, December 19, 1854, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 355
You may know what a thing costs or is worth to you; you can never know what it costs or is worth to me.
Written December 27, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, pp. 379–380
In the course of generations, however, men will excuse you for not doing as they do, if you will bring enough to pass in your own way.
Written December 27, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 380
It is insignificant & a merely negative good-fortune to be provided with thick garments against cold and wet—an unprofitable weak & defensive condition—compared with being able to extract some exhilaration—some warm Theven out of cold & wet themselves & to clothe them with our sympathy.
Written November 12, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 7, p. 156
Today I have had the experience of borrowing money for a poor Irishman who wishes to get his family to this country. One will never know his neighbors till he has carried a subscription paper among them.
Written October 12, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 7, p. 102
What is called charity is no charity but the interference of a third person.
Written February 11, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 264
To be supported by the charity of friends, or a government-pension,—provided you continue to breathe,—by whatever fine synonymes you describe these relations, is to go into the almshouse.
“Life without Principle” in Reform Papers, p. 160
Among my deeds of charity I may reckon the picking of a cherry tree for two helpless single ladies who live under the hill—but i’ faith it was robbing Peter to pay Paul—for while I was exalted in charity towards them, I had no mercy on my own stomack.
To his brother, John, July 8, 1838, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 27
You must have a genius for charity as well as for any thing else.
Walden, p. 73
The town’s poor seem to me oft en to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving.
Walden, p. 328
I require of a visitor that he be not actually starving, though he may have the very best appetite in the world, however he got it. Objects of charity are not guests.
Walden, p. 152
I tried to help him with my experience, telling him that he was one of my nearest neighbors, and that I too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like a loafer, was getting my living like himself; that I lived in a tight light and clean house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such a ruin as his commonly amounts to; and how, if he chose, he might in a month or two build himself a palace of his own; that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not have to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food; but as he began with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he had to eat hard to repair the waste of his system,—and so it was as broad as it was long, indeed it was broader than it was long, for he was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain.
On John Field, Irish laborer, in Walden, p. 205
He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, pp. 66–67
I speak for the slave when I say, that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.
“A Plea for Captain John Brown” in Reform Papers, p. 133
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday’s liberty for the rest.
Walden, pp. 75–76
I know some who in their charity give their coffee grounds to the poor!
To H.G.O. Blake, May 28, 1850, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 259
Our charitable institutions are an insult to humanity. A charity which dispenses the crumbs that fall from its overloaded tables.
Written January 28, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 299
It is our weakness that so exaggerates the virtues of philanthropy & charity & makes it the highest human attribute. The world will sooner or later tire of philanthropy and all religions based on it. They cannot long sustain my spirit.
Written April 2, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 419
There are those who have used all their arts to persuade me to undertake the support of some poor family in the town; and if I had nothing to do,—for the devil finds employment for the idle,—I might try my hand at some such pastime as that. However, when I have thought to indulge myself in this respect, and lay their Heaven under an obligation by maintaining certain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain myself, and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer, they have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor.
Walden, p. 72
I have been your pensioner for nearly two years, and still left free as under the sky. It has been as free a gift as the sun or the summer, though I have sometimes molested you with my mean acceptance of it.
To Ralph Waldo Emerson, January 24, 1843, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 78
How can I talk of Charity who at last withhold the kindness which alone makes charity desirable?
The poor want nothing less than me myself and I shirk charity by giving rags and meat.
Written March 25, 1842, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 391
I would not subtract any thing from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind.
Walden, p. 76
Shall we be charitable only to the poor?
Written after August 1, 1844, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 117
If you should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoe-strings.
Walden, p. 78
All the abuses which are the object of reform with the philanthropist, the statesman, and the housekeeper, are unconsciously amended in the intercourse of Friends.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 267
Every child begins the world again.
Walden, p. 28
Children appear to me as raw as the fresh fungi on a fence rail.
Written November 7, 1839, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 85
Youth wants something to look up to—to look forward to.
Written in the summer of 1845, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 205
How unaccountable the flow of spirits in youth. You may throw sticks and dirt into the current, and it will only rise the higher. Dam it up you may, but dry it up you may not, for you cannot reach its source. If you stop up this avenue or that, anon it will come gurgling out where you least expected, and wash away all fixtures. Youth grasps at happiness as an inalienable right.
Written September 16, 1838, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 56
The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but thank Heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent’s shadow.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 77
How few valuable observations can we make in youth.
Written April 2, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 416
The child may soon stand face to face with the best father.
Written February 12, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 264
I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected.
Written November 5, 1860, in his Journal, vol. XIV, p. 217
The senses of children are unprofaned. Their whole body is one sense. They take a physical pleasure in riding on a rail. They love to teter—so does the unviolated—the unsophisticated mind derive an inexpressible pleasure from the simplest exercises of thoughts.
Written July 7, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 291
The child plays continually, if you will let it, and all its life is a sort of practical humor of a very pure kind, oft en of so fine and ethereal a nature, that its parents, its uncles and cousins, can in no wise participate in it, but must stand aloof in silent admiration, and reverence even. The more quiet the more profound it is.
“Thomas Carlyle and His Works” in Early Essays and Miscellanies, p. 237
A child loves to strike on a tin pan or other ringing vessel with a stick, because its ears being fresh sound attentive & percipient it detects the finest music in the sound at which all Nature assists. Is not the very cope of the heavens the sounding board of the infant drummer? So clear and unprejudiced ears hear the sweetest & most soul stirring melody in tinkling cow bells & the like (dogs baying the moon) not to be referred to association but intrinsic in the sound itself. Those cheap & simple sounds which men despise because their ears are dull & debauched. Ah that I were so much a child that I could unfailingly draw music from a quart pot. Its little ears tingle with the melody. To it there is music in sound alone.
Written June 9, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, pp. 82–83
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon or perchance a palace or temple on the earth & at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood shed with them.
Written July 15, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 223
I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty & significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.
Written February 5, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 329
The young man is a demigod; the grown man, alas! is commonly a mere mortal.
Written December 19, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XIII, p. 35
Though the parents cannot determine whether the child shall be male or female yet methinks it depends on them whether he shall be a worthy addition to the human family.
Written November 23, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 398
The voices of school children sound like spring.
Written February 9, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 7, p. 276
Who can see these cities and say that there is any life in them?
Written in New York, September 24, 1843, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 465
Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries.
Walden, p. 264
It is folly to attempt to educate children within a city. The first step must be to remove them out of it.
Written July 25, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 332
I am more and more convinced that, with reference to any public question, it is more important to know what the country thinks of it, than what the city thinks. The city does not think much. On any moral question, I would rather have the opinion of Boxboro than of Boston and New York put together.
“Slavery in Massachusetts” in Reform Papers, pp. 98–99
What is the great attraction in cities? It is universally admitted that human beings invariably degenerate there and do not propagate their kind. Yet the prevailing tendency is to the city life, whether we move to Boston or stay in Concord.
Written fall–winter 1845–1846, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 147
The light behind the face of the clock on the state house in Philadelphia extinguished at 11 o’clock PM with punctuality to save oil. Those hours are resigned to a few watchmen in the cities, watching for the disgrace of humanity.
Written February 1, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 315
Coming out of town—willingly as usual.
Written July 9, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 297
I don’t like the city better, the more I see of it, but worse.… It is a thousand times meaner than I could have imagined.… The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population. When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?
Written on Staten Island to Ralph Waldo Emerson, June 8, 1843, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, pp. 111–112; emended from manuscript letter (The Writings of Henry David Thoreau Manuscript Edition #247, RAR 137 Da, Kungl Biblioteket, National Library of Sweden)
Though the city is no more attractive to me than ever yet I see less difference between a city & and some dismallest swamp than formerly. It is a swamp too dismal & dreary even for me.
Written after July 29, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 97
I can forego the seeming advantages of cities without misgiving.
Written after August 8, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 359
Whoever has been down to the end of Long Wharf, and walked through Quincy Market, has seen Boston.
Cape Cod, pp. 210–211
It is well known that the chestnut timber of this vicinity has rapidly disappeared within fifteen years, having been used for railroad sleepers, for rails, and for planks, so that there is danger that this part of our forest will become extinct.
Written October 17, 1860, in his Journal, vol. XIV, p. 137
The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing?
Written March 11, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 385
I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!
“Wild Apples” in Excursions, p. 288
I find that the rising generation in this town do not know what an oak or a pine is, having seen only inferior specimens. Shall we hire a man to lecture on botany, on oaks for instance, our noblest plants—while we permit others to cut down the few best specimens of these trees that are left? It is like teaching children Latin and Greek while we burn the books printed in those languages.
“Huckleberries,” p. 35
For beauty, give me trees with the fur on.
The Maine Woods, p. 125
We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man.
The Maine Woods, p. 153
I would rather save one of these hawks than have a hundred hens and chickens. It is worth more to see them soar—especially now that they are so rare in the landscape. It is easy to buy eggs but not to buy hen-hawks. My neighbors would not hesitate to shoot the last pair of henhawks in the town to save a few of their chickens! But such economy is narrow & grovelling. It is unnecessarily to sacrifice the greater value to the less. I would rather never taste chicken’s meat nor hen’s eggs than never to see a hawk sailing through the upper air again. This sight is worth incomparably more than a chicken soup or a boiled egg.
Written June 13, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 6, pp. 197–198
By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.
Walden, pp. 165–166
Why should not we, who have renounced the king’s authority, have our national preserves, where no villages need be destroyed, in which the bear and panther, and some even of the hunter race, may still exist, and not be “civilized off the face of the earth,”—our forests, not to hold the king’s game merely, but to hold and preserve the king himself also, the lord of creation,—not for idle sport or food, but for inspiration and our own true recreation?
The Maine Woods, p. 156
The very willow-rows lopped every three years for fuel or powder,—and every sizable pine and oak, or other forest tree, cut down within the memory of man! As if individual speculators were to be allowed to export the clouds out of the sky, or the stars out of the firmament, one by one. We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment.
The Maine Woods, p. 154
Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light,—to see its perfect success, but most are content to behold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market, and deem that its true success! But the pine is no more lumber than man is, and to be made into boards and houses is no more its true and highest use than the truest use of a man is to be cut down and made into manure. There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man.
The Maine Woods, p. 121
Men & boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses, but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?
To H.G.O. Blake, May 20, 1860, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, pp. 578–579
What are the natural features which make a township handsome? A river, with its waterfalls and meadows, a lake, a hill, a cliffor individual rocks, a forest, and ancient trees standing singly. Such things are beautiful; they have a high use which dollars and cents never represent. If the inhabitants of a town were wise, they would seek to preserve these things, though at a considerable expense; for such things educate far more than any hired teachers or preachers, or any at present recognized system of school education.
Written January 3, 1861, in his Journal, vol. XIV, p. 304
Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest of five hundred or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation. We hear of cow-common and ministerial lots, but we want men-commons and lay lots, inalienable forever. Let us keep the New World new, preserve all the advantages of living in the country. There is meadow and pasture and wood-lot for the town’s poor. Why not a forest and huckleberry-field for the town’s rich? All Walden Wood might have been preserved for our park forever, with Walden in its midst, and the Easterbrooks Country, an unoccupied area of some four square miles, might have been our huckleberry-field.
Written October 15, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 387
But most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum—many for a glass of rum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth! We are safe on that side for the present.
Written January 3, 1861, in his Journal, vol. XIV, pp. 306–307
If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care.
Written September 28, 1857, in his Journal, vol. X, p. 51
As some give to Harvard College or another institution, why might not another give a forest or huckleberry-field to Concord? A town is an institution which deserves to be remembered. We boast of our system of education, but why stop at schoolmasters and schoolhouses? We are all schoolmasters, and our schoolhouse is the universe. To attend chiefly to the desk or schoolhouse while we neglect the scenery in which it is placed is to save at the spile and waste at the bung. If we do not look out we shall find our fair schoolhouse standing in a cow-yard at last.
Written October 15, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 387; emended from manuscript Journal (MA 1302, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York)
It would be worth the while if in each town there were a committee appointed to see that the beauty of the town received no detriment. If we have the largest boulder in the county, then it should not belong to an individual, nor be made into door-steps.
Written January 3, 1861, in his Journal, vol. XIV, pp. 304–305
We accuse savages of worshipping only the bad spirit, or devil, though they may distinguish both a good and a bad; but they regard only that one which they fear and worship the devil only. We too are savages in this, doing precisely the same thing. This occurred to me yesterday as I sat in the woods admiring the beauty of a blue butterfly. We are not chiefly interested in birds and insects, for example, as they are ornamental to the earth and cheering to man, but we spare the lives of the former only on condition that they eat more grubs than they do cherries.
Written May 1, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 170; emended from manuscript Journal (MA 1302, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York)
The catechism says that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, which of course is applicable mainly to God as seen in his works. Yet the only account of its beautiful insects—butterflies, etc.—which God has made and set before us which the State ever thinks of spending any money on is the account of those which are injurious to vegetation! This is the way we glorify God and enjoy him forever. Come out here and behold a thousand painted butterflies and other beautiful insects which people the air, then go to the libraries and see what kind of prayer and glorification of God is there recorded. Massachusetts has published her report on “Insects Injurious to Vegetation,” and our neighbor the “Noxious Insects of New York.” We have attended to the evil and said nothing about the good.
Written May 1, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, pp. 170–171
Children are attracted by the beauty of butterflies, but their parents and legislators deem it an idle pursuit. The parents remind me of the Devil, not the children of God. Though God may have pronounced his work good, we ask. “Is it not poisonous?”
Written May 1, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 171; emended from manuscript Journal (MA 1302, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York)
I thought with regret how soon these trees, like the black birches that grew on the hill near by, would be all cut off, and there would be almost nothing of the old Concord left, and we should be reduced to read old deeds in order to be reminded of such things,—deeds, at least, in which some old and revered bound trees are mentioned. These will be the only proof at last that they ever existed.
Written November 8, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 299
The bream appreciated floats in the pond as the centre of the system, another image of God. Its life no man can explain more than he can his own. I want you to perceive the mystery of the bream. I have a contemporary in Walden. It has fins where I have legs and arms. I have a friend among the fishes, at least a new acquaintance.… Acquaintance with it is to make my life more rich and eventful.
Written November 30, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 359; emended from manuscript Journal (MA 1302, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York)
When the question of the protection of birds comes up, the legislatures regard only a low use and never a high use; the best-disposed legislators employ one, perchance, only to examine their crops and see how many gnats or cherries they contain, and never to study their dispositions, or the beauty of their plumage, or listen and report on the sweetness of their song. The legislature will preserve a bird professedly not because it is a beautiful creature, but because it is a good scavenger or the like. This, at least, is the defence setup. It is as if the question were whether some celebrated singer of the human race—some Jenny Lind or another—did more harm or good, should be destroyed, or not, and therefore a committee should be appointed, not to listen to her singing at all, but to examine the contents of her stomach and see if she devoured anything which was injurious to the farmers and gardeners, or which they cannot spare.
Written April 8, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, pp. 124–125; emended from manuscript Journal (MA 1302, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York)
In my boating of late I have several times scared up a couple of summer ducks of this year, bred in our meadows. They allowed me to come quite near, and helped to people the river. I have not seen them for some days. Would you know the end of our intercourse? Goodwin shot them, and Mrs.———, who never sailed on the river ate them. Of course, she knows not what she did.… They belonged to me, as much as to anyone, when they were alive, but it was considered of more importance that Mrs.———should taste the flavor of them dead than that I should enjoy the beauty of them alive.
Written August 16, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 107; emended from manuscript Journal (MA 1302, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York)
We have heard much of the wonderful intelligence of the beaver, but that regard for the beaver is all a pretense, and we would give more for a beaver hat than to preserve the intelligence of the whole race of beavers.
Written April 8, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 121
The smokes from a dozen clearings far and wide, from a portion of the earth thirty miles or more in diameter, reveal the employment of many husbandmen at this season. Thus I see the woods burned up from year to year. The telltale smokes reveal it. The smokes will become rarer and thinner year by year, till I shall detect only a mere feathery film and there is no more brush to be burned.
Written October 10, 1857, in his Journal, vol. X, p. 83
The Anglo American can indeed cut down and grub up all this waving forest and make a stump speech and vote for Buchanan on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells—he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances. He ignorantly erases mythological tablets in order to print his handbills and town meeting warrants on them.
The Maine Woods, p. 229
I seek acquaintance with Nature,—to know her moods and manners. Primitive Nature is the most interesting to me. I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I learn that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth.
Written March 23, 1856, in his Journal, vol. VIII, p. 221; emended from manuscript Journal (MA 1302, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York)
I am thinking by what long discipline and at what cost a man learns to speak simply at last.
Written December 12, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 202
Written February 20, 1842, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 369
Say what you have to say, not what you ought.
Walden, p. 327
The most constant phenomenon when men or women come together is talking.
Written between 1842 and 1844, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 67
All words are gossip.
Written between 1847 and 1848, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 380
Men cannot stay long together without talking, according to the rules of polite society.
Written between 1842 and 1844, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 67
We had nothing to say to one another, and therefore we said a great deal!
To Ralph Waldo Emerson, January 24, 1843, after meeting John L. O’Sullivan, founder and editor of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 77
Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip.
“Life without Principle” in Reform Papers, p. 169
I have sometimes heard a conversation beginning again when it should have ceased for want of fuel.
Passage omitted from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers as published in Linck C. Johnson, Thoreau’s Complex Weave, p. 468
The gregariousness of men is their most contemptible and discouraging aspect.
Written April 3, 1858, in his Journal, vol. X, p. 350
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say.
Walden, p. 52
Do not speak for other men—Speak for yourself.
Written December 25, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 223
In the morning we do not believe in expediency—we will start afresh, and have no patching—no temporary fixtures. The afternoon man has an interest in the past; his eye is divided and he sees indifferently well either way.
Written April 4, 1839, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 69
For my panacea… let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountain-head of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world.
Walden, p. 138
Have you knowledge of the morning? Do you sympathise with that season of nature? Are you abroad early, brushing the dews aside? If the sun rises on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning cock crow, if you do not witness the blushes of Aurora, if you are not acquainted with Venus as the morning star, what relation have you to wisdom & purity? You have then forgotten your creator in the days of your youth.
Written July 18, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 312
Morning brings back the heroic ages.
Walden p. 88
Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.
Walden, p. 90
The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer.
Walden, p. 301
Many men walk by day, few walk by night. It is a very different season.
Written after July 1, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 92
Is not the midnight like central Africa to most?
Written February 1, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 315
To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever—so to relate ourselves for our mind’s & body’s health to a universal fact.
Written January 20, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 270
It is day & we have more of that same light that the moon sent us but not reflected now but shining directly. The sun is a fuller moon. Who knows how much brighter day there may be?
Written June 11, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 92
The voice of the crickets heard at noon from deep in the grass allies day to night. It is unaffected by sun & moon. It is a mid-night sound heard at noon—a midday sound heard at midnight.
Written June 29, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 280
The morning hope is soon lost in what becomes the routine of the day & we do not recover ourselves again until we land on the pensive shores of evening.
Written January 8, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 7, p. 227
How swift ly the earth appears to revolve at sunset which at midday appears to rest on its axle.
Written December 21, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 215
We never tire of the drama of sunset.… Can Washington Street or Broad-Way show anything as good? Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour in such lights as the great artist chooses & then withdrawn & the curtain falls.
Written January 7, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 242
The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure & serene as the western sky at sunset while revolutions vex the world.
Written December 27, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 225
If I were to choose a time for a friend to make a passing visit to this world for the first time in the full possession of all his faculties perchance it would be at a moment when the sun was setting with splendor in the west—his light reflected far & wide through the clarified air after a rain—and a brilliant rain-bow as now oerarching the eastern sky.
Written August 7, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 287
Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a west as distant and as fair as that into which the Sun goes down.
“Walking” in Excursions, p. 197
So is not shade as good as sunshine—night as day? Why be eagles and thrushes always, and owls and whippoor-wills never?
Written June 16, 1840, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 129
As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more & more bright I begin to distinguish myself, who I am & where. As my walls contract I become more collected & composed & sensible of my own existence—as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment & I see who the company are.
Written August 5, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, pp. 353–354
By moonlight all is simple. We are enabled to erect ourselves, our minds, on account of the fewness of objects. We are no longer distracted. It is simple as bread and water. It is simple as the rudiments of an art.
Written September 22, 1854, in his Journal, vol. VII, p. 51
Nature seems not have designed that man should be much abroad by night and in the moon proportioned the light fitly. By the faintness & rareness of the light compared with that of the sun she expresses her intention with regard to him.
Written June 14, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 269
When man is asleep & day fairly forgotten, then is the beauty of moon light seen over lonely pastures where cattle are silently feeding.
Written June 14, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 268
The night is oracular.
Written October 27, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 156
There is a certain glory attends on water by night. By it the heavens are related to the earth—Undistinguishable from a sky beneath you.
Written June 13, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 260
When I am outside on the outskirts of the town enjoying the still majesty of the moon I am wont to think that all men are aware of this miracle—that they too are silently worshipping this manifestation of divinity elsewhere—but when I go into the house I am undeceived, they are absorbed in checquers or chess or novel, though they may have been advertised of the brightness through the shutters.
Written May 16, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 219
We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches.
Walden, p. 22
FIG. 3. Edward Emerson’s copy of Daniel Ricketson’s pencil sketch of Thoreau originally drawn on December 12, 1854. The Raymond Adams Collection (The Thoreau Society® Collections at the Thoreau Institute). Courtesy of the Thoreau Society.
No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes.
Walden, p. 22
It is highly important to invent a dress which will enable us to be abroad with impunity in the severest storms. We cannot be said to have fully invented clothing yet.
Written April 22, 1856, in his Journal, vol. VIII, pp. 299–300
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
Walden, p. 23
We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.
Walden, p. 25
When I see a fine lady or gentleman dressed to the top of the fashion, I wonder what they would do if an earthquake should happen, or a fire suddenly break out, for they seem to have counted only on fair weather, and that things will go on smoothly and without jostling.
Written July 12, 1840, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 157
The walker and naturalist does not wear a hat, or a shoe, or a coat, to be looked at, but for other uses. When a citizen comes to take a walk with me I commonly find that he is lame,—disabled by his shoeing. He is sure to wet his feet, tear his coat, and jam his hat, and the superior qualities of my boots, coat, and hat appear. I once went into the woods with a party for a fortnight. I wore my old and common clothes, which were of Vermont gray. They wore, no doubt, the best they had for such an occasion,—of a fashionable color and quality. I thought that they were a little ashamed of me while we were in the towns. They all tore their clothes badly but myself, and I, who, it chanced, was the only one provided with needles and thread, enabled them to mend them. When we came out of the woods I was the best dressed of any of them.
Written March 26, 1860, in his Journal, vol. XIII, pp. 231–232
How different are men and women, e.g. in respect to the adornment of their heads! Do you ever see an old or jammed bonnet on the head of a woman at a public meeting? But look at any assembly of men with their hats on; how large a proportion of the hats will be old, weather-beaten, and indented, but I think so much the more picturesque and interesting!
Written December 25, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XIII, p. 51
The chief recommendation of the Kossuth hat is that it looks old to start with, and almost as good as new to end with.
Written December 25, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XIII, p. 52
It is generally conceded that a man does not look the worse for a somewhat dilapidated hat.
Written December 25, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XIII, p. 52
Men wear their hats for use; women theirs for ornament.
Written December 25, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XIII, p. 52
Ladies are in haste to dress as if it were cold or as if it were warm,—though it may not yet be so,—merely to display a new dress.
Written December 25, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XIII, p. 52
It is astonishing how far a merely well-dressed and good-looking man may go without being challenged by any sentinel.
Written January 3, 1856, in his Journal, vol. VIII, p. 82
Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer’s character, until we hesitate to lay them aside, without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies.
Walden, pp. 21–22
I have had made a pair of corduroy pants, which cost when done $1.60. They are of that peculiar clay-color, reflecting the light from portions of their surface. They have this advantage, that, beside being very strong, they will look about as well three months hence as now,—or as ill, some would say.
Written May 8, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 359
When I go a-visiting I find that I go off the fashionable street—not being inclined to change my dress—to where man meets man and not polished shoe meets shoe.
Written June 11, 1855, in his Journal, vol. VII, p. 416
I have just got a letter from Ricketson, urging me to come to New Bedford, which possibly I may do. He says I can wear my old clothes there.
To H.G.O. Blake, September 26, 1855, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 385
I just had a coat come home from the tailors—ah me—who am I that I should wear this coat? It was fitted upon one of the Devil’s angels about my size. Of what use that measuring of me if he did not measure my character? This is not the figure that I cut—this is the figure the tailor cuts.
Written January 14, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 7, p. 241
I was pleased the other day to see a son of Concord return after an absence of eight years, not in a shining suit of black, with polished boots and a beaver or silk hat, as if on a furlough from human duties generally,—a mere clothes-horse,—but clad in an honest clay-colored suit and a snug every-day cap. It showed unusual manhood.
Written May 8, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, pp. 359–360
I would make education a pleasant thing both to the teacher and the scholar. This discipline, which we allow to be the end of life, should not be one thing in the schoolroom, and another in the street. We should seek to be fellow students with the pupil, and we should learn of, as well as with him, if we would be most helpful to him.
To Orestes Brownson, December 30, 1837, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 20
Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month,—the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this,—or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the mean while, and had received a Rodgers’ penknife from his father?
Walden, p. 51
I served my apprenticeship and have since done considerable journeywork in the huckleberry field. Though I never paid for my schooling and clothing in that way, it was some of the best schooling that I got and paid for itself.
“Huckleberries,” p. 26
FIG. 4. Letter of recommendation for Thoreau as a teacher from Josiah Quincy, president of Harvard University, March 26, 1838. The Raymond Adams Collection (The Thoreau Society® Collections at the Thoreau Institute). Courtesy of the Thoreau Society
Knowledge does not come to us by details but by lieferungs from the gods.
Written July 7, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 291
Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
“Life without Principle” in Reform Papers, p. 173
What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice, and at length it falls from us without our notice, as a leaf from a tree.
Written March 11, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 39
We saw one school-house in our walk, and listened to the sounds which issued from it; but it appeared like a place where the process, not of enlightening, but of obfuscating the mind was going on, and the pupils received only so much light as could penetrate the shadow of the Catholic church.
“A Yankee in Canada” in Excursions, p. 116
Knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another’s experience only by his own.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 365
I have noticed that whatever is thought to be covered by the word education—whether reading, writing or ’rithmetick—is a great thing, but almost all that constitutes education is a little thing in the estimation of such speakers as I refer to.
“Huckleberries,” p. 3
Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.
Walden, p. 50
The audience are never tired of hearing how far the wind carried some man woman or child—or family bible—but they are immediately tired if you undertake to give them a scientific account of it.
Written February 4, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 328
All the branches and none of the roots.
On hearing Emerson remark that most of the branches of knowledge were taught at Harvard, as reported by John Albee in Remembrances of Emerson, p. 30
We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment.
Walden, p. 108
It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure—if they are indeed so well off—to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives.
Walden, pp. 108–109
I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and, as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen now.
On spending a night in jail for nonpayment of taxes in “Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 84
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 105
What does education oft en do! It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free meandering brook.
Written after October 31, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 130
Many College text books which were a weariness & a stumbling block when studied I have since read a little in with pleasure & profit.
Written February 19, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 10
During the berry season the Schools have a vacation and many little fingers are busy picking these small fruits.… I remember how glad I was when I was kept from school a half a day to pick huckleberries on a neighboring hill all by myself to make a pudding for the family dinner. Ah, they got nothing but the pudding—but I got invaluable experience beside.
Written July 16, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 307
I well remember with what a sense of freedom and spirit of adventure I used to take my way across the fields with my pail… toward some distant hill or swamp, when dismissed for all day, and I would not now exchange such an expansion of all my being for all the learning in the world. Liberation and enlargement—such is the fruit which all culture aims to secure. I suddenly knew more about my books than if I had never ceased studying them. I found myself in a schoolroom where I could not fail to see and hear things worth seeing and hearing—where I could not help getting my lesson—for my lesson came to me. Such experience oft en repeated, was the chief encouragement to go to the Academy and study a book at last.
“Huckleberries,” pp. 27–28
Do not think that the fruits of New England are mean and insignificant, while those of some foreign land are noble and memorable. Our own, whatever they may be, are far more important to us than any others can be. They educate us, and fit us to live in New England. Better for us is the wild strawberry than the pineapple, the wild apple than the orange, the hazelnut or pignut than the cocoanut or almond, and not on account of their flavor merely, but the part they play in our education.
Written November 26, 1860, in his Journal, vol. XIV, p. 274
It is strange that men are in such haste to get fame as teachers rather than knowledge as learners.
Written March 11, 1856, in his Journal, vol. VIII, p. 205
Who knows whence his education is to come!
To Isaac Hecker, after August 15, 1844, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 158
I am still a learner, not a teacher, feeding somewhat omnivorously, browsing both stalk & leaves.
To H.G.O. Blake, May 21, 1856, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, pp. 423–424
We of Massachusetts boast a good deal of what we do for the education of our people—of our district-school system—& yet our district schools are as it were but infant schools & we have no system for the education of the great mass who are grown up.
Written September 27, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 101
We boast that we belong to the 19th century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture—perchance a comparatively decent system of common schools—schools for infants only, as it were, but excepting the half starved lyceum in the winter, no school for ourselves.
Written August 29, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 318
With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike.
Walden, p. 99
The poet says the proper study of mankind is man. I say study to forget all that—take wider views of the universe.
Written April 2, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 418
The universe is wider than our views of it.
Walden, p. 320
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
Written October 4, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 371
What is hope, what is expectation, but a seed-time whose harvest cannot fail, an irresistible expedition of the mind, at length to be victorious?
Written February 20, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 275
Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are oft en in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation.
Walden, p. 210
What is this heaven which they expect, if it is no better than they expect? Are they prepared for a better than they can now imagine?
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 379
Consider the infinite promise of a man, so that the sight of his roof at a distance suggests an idyll or pastoral, or of his grave an Elegy in a Country Churchyard.
Written October 3, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 369
Most men can keep a horse or keep up a certain fashionable style of living, but few indeed can keep up great expectations.
Written May 6, 1858, in his Journal, vol. X, p. 405
Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature—make a day to bring forth something new?
Written April 18, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 468
We soon get through with Nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy. The merest child which has rambled into a copse wood dreams of a wilderness so wild and strange & inexhaustible as Nature can never show him.
Written May 23, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 146
Give me the old familiar walk, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten. We’ll go nutting once more. We’ll pluck the nut of the world, and crack it in the winter evenings. Theatres and all other sightseeing are puppet-shows in comparison.
Written November 1, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 274
The truest account of heaven is the fairest & I will accept none which disappoints expectation. It is more glorious to expect a better, than to enjoy a worse.
Written January 26, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 290
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.
Walden, p. 90
We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial,—considering what one’s dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry.
“Life without Principle,” in Reform Papers, p. 170
With what infinite & unwearied expectation and proclamations the cocks usher in every dawn as if there had never been one before.
Written March 16, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 391
Show men unlimited faith as the coin with which you will deal with them, and they will invariably exhibit the best wares they have.
Written January 28, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 233
May I go to my slumbers as expecting to arise to a new & more perfect day.
Written July 16, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 311
Expectation may amount to prophecy.
Written April 2, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 415
Our circumstances answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 292
Is not the attitude of expectation somewhat divine?—a sort of home-made divineness?
To H.G.O. Blake, May 28, 1850, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 259
They who are ready to go are already invited.
Written July 2, 1840, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 147
Who is old enough to have learned from experience?
Written March 21, 1842, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 385
My only integral experience is in my vision.
To H.G.O. Blake, May 2, 1848, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 222
All we have experienced is so much gone within us and there lies. It is the company we keep.
Written February 8, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 258
In the summer we lay up a stock of experiences for the winter, as the squirrel of nuts. Something for conversation in winter evenings.
Written September 4, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 40
Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp,—are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 300
Going a-berrying implies more things than eating the berries.
“Huckleberries,” pp. 26–27
The poet deals with his privatest experience.
Written April 8, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 57
It is a grand fact that you cannot make the fairer fruits or parts of fruits matter of commerce; that is, you cannot buy the highest use and enjoyment of them. You cannot buy that pleasure which it yields to him who truly plucks it.
Wild Fruits, p. 5
The chief want is ever a life of deep experiences.
Written June 8, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 181
Our mother’s faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 77
Methinks my present experience is nothing, my past experience is all in all. I think that no experience which I have today comes up to or is comparable with the experiences of my boyhood.
Written July 16, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 305
Our life is not altogether a forgetting but also alas to a great extent a remembering of that which perchance we should never have been conscious of—the consciousness of what should not be permitted to disturb a man’s waking hours.
Written November 10, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 174
The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.
Written November 26, 1860, in his Journal, vol. XIV, p. 274
Do not tread on the heels of your experience. Be impressed without making a minute of it.
Written July 23, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 331
There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation to be interesting i.e. to be significant must be subjective.
Written May 6, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 98
Early for several mornings I have heard the sound of a flail. It leads me to ask if I have spent as industrious a spring & summer as the farmer & gathered as rich a crop of experience. Let the sound of my flail be heard, by those who have ears to hear, separating the kernel from the chaff all the fall & winter & a sound no less cheering it will be.
Written August 29, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 307
I must not lose any of my freedom by being a farmer and land holder. Most who enter on any profession are doomed men. The world might as well sing a dirge over them forthwith. The farmer’s muscles are rigid—he can do one thing long not many well. His pace seems determined henceforth—he never quickens it. A very rigid Nemesis is his fate. When the right wind blows or a star calls, I can leave this arable and grass ground, without making a will or settling my estate. I would buy a farm as freely as a silken streamer. Let me not think my front windows must face east henceforth because a particular hill slopes that way. My life must undulate still. I will not feel that my wings are clipt when once I have settled on ground which the law calls my own but find new pinions grown to the old and talaria to my feet beside.
Written after March 27, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 291
I talked of buying Conantum once but for want of money we did not come to terms—but I have farmed it in my own fashion every year since.
Written August 31, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 25
Buy a farm! What have I to pay for a farm which a farmer will take?
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 350
As for farming, I am convinced it is too tame for me and my genius dates from an older era than the agricultural. I would strike my spade into the earth with such careless freedom, but accuracy, as the woodpecker his bill into a tree.
Written between 1842 and 1844, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 22
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil?
Walden, p. 5
I respect not his labors, his farm where every thing has its price; who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get any thing for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars; who loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to dollars.
Walden, p. 196
Farms are for sale all around here—and so I suppose men are for purchase.
To his parents, June 8, 1843, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 114
When I witness the first plowing and planting, I acquire a long-lost confidence in the earth,—that it will nourish the seed that is committed to its bosom.
Written March 28, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 310
The scholar’s & the farmer’s work are strictly analogous.… He is doing like myself. My barn-yard is my journal.
Written January 20, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 269
The farmer has always come to the field after some material thing; that is not what a philosopher goes there for.
Written October 14, 1857, in his Journal, vol. X, p. 94
Successful farming admits of no idling.
Written July 23, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 240
I have faith that the man who redeemed some acres of land the past summer redeemed also some parts of his character.
Written March 1, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 369
The farmer increases the extent of habitable earth. He makes soil. That is an honorable occupation.
Written March 2, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 371
It is a novel sight, that of the farmer distributing manure with a shovel in the field and planting again. The earth looks warm and genial again.… I could almost lie down in the furrow and be warmed into her life and growth.
Written March 26, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 303
What noble work is plowing, with the broad and solid earth for material, the ox for fellow-laborer, and the simple but efficient plow for tool!… It comes pretty near to making a world.
Written March 28, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, pp. 310–311
It is agreeable once more to put a spade into the warm mould. The victory is ours at last, for we remain and take possession of the field.
Written March 31, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 312
He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.
Walden, p. 218
We live too fast & coarsely just as we eat too fast & do not know the true savor of our food.
Written December 28, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 412
The indecent haste and grossness with which our food is swallowed, have cast a disgrace on the very act of eating itself.
Written after July 16, 1845, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 165
A man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.
Walden, p. 61
It is a common saying among country people that if you eat much fried hasty pudding it will make your hair curl. My experience which was considerable did not confirm this assertion.
Written November 20, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 146
Some men are excited by the smell of burning powder but I thought in my dream last night how much saner to be excited by the smell of new bread.
Written September 25, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 97
Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable way,—as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn,—and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet.
Walden, pp. 215–216
Like many of my contemporaries I had rarely for many years used animal food or tea or coffee, &c &c not so much because of any ill effects which I had traced to them in my own case, though I could theorize extensively in that direction as because it was not agreeable to my imagination. It appeared more beautiful to live low & fare hard in many respects, and though I never did so I went just far enough to please my imagination. But now I find myself somewhat less particular in these respects. I carry less religion to the table, ask no blessing—not because I am wiser than I was—but I am obliged to confess, because, however much it is to be regretted, with years I have grown more coarse and indifferent.
Written November 28, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 399
Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
Walden, p. 216
One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.
Walden, p. 9
A man may esteem himself happy when that which is his food is also his medicine.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 256
Man for once stands in such relation to Nature as the animals—they pluck & eat as they go. The fields & hills are a table constantly spread. Wines of all kinds & qualities of noblest vintages are bottled up in the skins of countless berries for the taste of men & animals. To men they seem offered not so much for food as for sociality that they may picnic with nature—Diet drinks—cordials—wines—We pluck & eat in remembrance of Her. It is a sacrament—a communion.
Written July 24, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 6, pp. 266–267
We have not had such a year for berries this long time—the earth is actually blue with them. High blueberries, three kinds of low—thimble and rasp-berries, constitute my diet at present. (Take notice—I only diet between meals.)
To his brother, John, July 8, 1838, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 27
I have carried an apple in my pocket tonight.… I realize the existence of a goddess Pomona and that the gods have really intended that men should feed divinely, like themselves, on their own nectar & ambrosia. They have so painted this fruit and freighted it with such a fragrance that it satisfies much more than an animal appetite.
Written after July 16, 1845, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 165
The bitter-sweet of a white oak acorn which you nibble in a bleak November walk over the tawny earth is more to me than a slice of imported pineapple. We do not think much of table-fruits. They are especially for aldermen and epicures. They do not feed the imagination. That would starve on them. These wild fruits, whether eaten or not, are a dessert for the imagination.
Written November 24, 1860, in his Journal, vol. XIV, p. 265
I cannot but believe that acorns were intended to be the food of man. They are agreeable to the palate as the mother’s milk to the babe.
Written October 8, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 133
Drink the wines not of your bottling but nature’s bottling—not kept in goat skins or pig skins but the skins of a myriad fair berries.
Written August 23, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 7, p. 16
I have drank tea & coffee & made myself cheap and vulgar. My days have been all noon tide without sacred mornings & evenings.
Written August 13, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 265
Wine is not a noble liquor, except when it is confined to the pores of the grape.
Written after September 19, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 119
I am glad to have drunk water so long, as I prefer the natural sky to an opium eater’s heaven—would keep sober always, and lead a sane life, not indebted to stimulants. Whatever my practice may be, I believe that it is the only drink for a wise man, and only the foolish habitually use any other.
Written after September 19, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 119
The common perch.… is the firmest and toughest of our fishes and by those who are not epicures most preferred for food.
Written after August 1, 1844, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 108
It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination.
Walden, p. 215
The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you.
Walden, p. 215
It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery.
Walden, p. 215
Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others.
Walden, p. 215
The greater or less abundance of food determines migrations.
Written April 23, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 486
FIG. 5. Detail from “Protest of 400 inhabitants of Concord against the execution of Washington Goode,” 1849. The Thoreau Society Archives (The Thoreau Society® Collections at the Thoreau Institute). Courtesy of the Thoreau Society.
Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom.
“Life without Principle” in Reform Papers, p. 160
Written March 21, 1840, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 118
I never met a man who cast a free and healthy glance over life.
Written August 1, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 315
What other liberty is there worth having, if we have not freedom & peace in our minds, if our inmost & most private man is but a sour & turbid pool.
Written October 26, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 7, p.115
When on my way this after noon shall I go down this long hill in the rain to fish in the pond “I ask myself” and I say to my-self yes roam far—grasp life & conquer it—learn much—& live—Your fetters are knocked off—you are really free.
Written August 23, 1845, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 177
Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George the IV. and continue the slaves of prejudice? What is it be born free & equal & not to live. What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom. Is it a freedom to be slaves or a freedom to be free, of which we boast.
Written February 16, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 194
We would fain express our appreciation of the freedom and steady wisdom, so rare in the reformer, with which he declared that he was not born to abolish slavery, but to do right.
“Wendell Phillips Before Concord Lyceum” in Reform Papers, p. 61
I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 67
Wait not till slaves pronounce the word
To set the captive free,
Be free yourselves, be not deferred,
And farewell slavery.
Untitled poem in Collected Poems of Henry Thoreau, p. 198
Let the State dissolve her union with the slaveholder. She may wriggle and hesitate, and ask leave to read the Constitution once more; but she can find no respectable law or precedent which sanctions the continuance of such a Union for an instant.
“Slavery in Massachusetts” in Reform Papers, p. 104
What is the character of that calm which follows the success when the law and the slave-holder prevail?
Written October 19, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 404; emended from manuscript Journal (MA 1302, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York)
A government that pretends to be Christian and crucifies a million Christs every day!
Written October 19, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 404
Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.
Written December 4, 1860, in his Journal, vol. XIV, p. 292
There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day?
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 69
As long as you know of it, you are particeps criminis.
To Parker Pillsbury, April 10, 1861, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 611
I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 130
I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,—if ten honest men only,—aye, if one honest man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done for ever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 75
There has not been anything which you could call union between the North and South in this country for many years, and there cannot be so long as slavery is in the way. I only wish that Northern—that any men—were better material, or that I for one had more skill to deal with them; that the north had more spirit and would settle the question at once, and here instead of struggling feebly and protractedly away off on the plains of Kansas.
To Thomas Cholmondeley, October 20, 1856, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 436
Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? free from fear, from perturbation, from prejudice?
Written May 6, 1858, in his Journal, vol. X, p. 404
I wonder men can be so frivolous almost as to attend to the gross form of negro slavery—there are so many keen and subtle masters, who subject us both. Self-emancipation in the West Indies of a man’s thinking and imagining provinces, which should be more than his island territory. One emancipated heart & intellect—It would knock off the fetters from a million slaves.
Written July 6, 1845, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 156
It hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive the full import of that word—Freedom—not a paltry Republican freedom, with a posse comitatus at his heels to administer it in doses as to a sick child—but a freedom proportionate to the dignity of his nature—a freedom that shall make him feel that he is a man among men, and responsible only to that Reason of which he is a particle, for his thoughts and his actions.
To Orestes Brownson, December 30, 1837, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 20
You know we have hardly done our own deeds, thought our own thoughts, or lived our own lives, hitherto. For a man to act himself, he must be perfectly free; otherwise, he is in danger of losing all sense of responsibility or of self-respect.
To his sister, Helen, October 27, 1837, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 15
Thank God, no Hindoo tyranny prevailed at the framing of the world, but we are freemen of the universe, and not sentenced to any cast.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 148
It is hard to have a southern over-seer it is worse to have a northern one but worst of all when you are yourself the slave driver.
Written winter 1845–1846, in his Journal, vol. 2, pp. 219–220
The stern command is—move or ye shall be moved—be the master of your own action or you shall unawares become the tool of the meanest slave. Any can command him who doth not command himself.
Written after July 24, 1846, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 263
It is our children’s children who may perchance be essentially free.
Written February 16, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 194
I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.
Walden, p. 84
The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men whether black or white require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their good.
Written September 1, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 7, p. 29
Freedom of speech! It hath not entered into your hearts to conceive what those words mean. It is not leave given me by your sect to say this or that; it is when leave is given to your sect to withdraw. The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard. I ask only that one fourth part of my honest thoughts be spoken aloud.
Written November 16, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 324
If you are prepared to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again; if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready for a walk.
“Walking” in Excursions, p. 186
We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at least, if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence, which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God.
“Walking” in Excursions, p. 186
Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free. Thither no business leads me. It is hard for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes, or sufficient Wildness and Freedom behind the eastern horizon.
“Walking” in Excursions, p. 196
I rarely walk by moonlight without hearing the sound of a flute or a horn or a human voice. It is a performer I never see by day—should not recognise him if pointed out—but you may hear his performance in every horizon. He plays but one strain and goes to bed early but I know by the character of that single strain that he is deeply dissatisfied with the manner in which he spends his day. He is a slave who is purchasing his freedom. He is Apollo watching the flocks of Admetus on every hill & this strain he plays every evening to remind him of his heavenly descent, it is all that saves him—his one redeeming trait.
Written August 5, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 355
My life more civil is and free
Than any civil polity.
“Independence” in Collected Poems of Henry Thoreau, p. 132
Have we resigned the protection of our hearths and civil liberties to that feathered race of wading birds & marching men who drill but once a month & I mean no reproach to our Concord train bands—who make a handsome appearance—and dance well. Do we enjoy the sweets of domestic life undisturbed because the naughty boys are all shut up in that white-washed “stone-yard” as it is called and see the Concord meadows only through a grating?
No. Let us live amid the free play of the elements. Let the dogs bark. Let the cocks crow & the sun shine and the winds blow.
Written after August 1, 1844, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 118
When I converse with the freest of my neighbors, I perceive that, whatever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the question, and their regard for the public tranquility, the long and the short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and they dread the consequences of disobedience to it to their property and families.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 78
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 78
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, pp. 79–80
The information which the gods vouchsafe to give us is never concerning anything which we wished to know. We are not wise enough to put a question to them. Tell me some truth about society and you will annihilate it. What though we are its ailing members and prisoners. We cannot always be detained by your measures for reform. All that is called hindrance without is but occasion within. The prisoner who is free in spirit, on whose innocent life some rays of light and hope still fall, will not delay to be a reformer of prisons, an inventor of superior prison disciplines, but walks forth free on the path by which those rays penetrated to his cell. Has the Green Mountain boy made no better nor more thrilling discovery than that the church is rotten and the state corrupt? Thank heaven, we have not to choose our calling out of those enterprises which society has to offer. Is he then indeed called, who chooses to what he is called? Obey your calling rather, and it will not be whither your neighbors and kind friends and patrons expect or desire, but be true nevertheless, and choose not, nor go whither they will call you.
“Reform and the Reformers” in Reform Papers, p. 188
We would have some pure product of man’s hands, some pure labor, some life got in this old trade of getting a living—some work done which shall not be a mending, a cobbling, a reforming. Show me the mountain boy, the city boy, who never heard of an abuse, who has not chosen his calling. It is the delight of the ages, the free labor of man, even the creative and beautiful arts.
“Reform and the Reformers” in Reform Papers, p. 188
Yet we think that if rail-fences are pulled down, and stone-walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided. If you are chosen town-clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer: but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.
Walden, p. 320
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.
Walden, p. 6
The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success.
Walden, p. 12
I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.
Walden, p. 16
In those days when how to get my living honestly with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, I used to see a large box by the railroad, 6 feet long by 3 wide, in which the workmen locked up their tools at night—And it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and having bored a few auger holes in it to admit the air at least—get into it when it rained and at night, & so have freedom in his mind and in his soul be free. This did not seem the worst alternative nor by any means a despicable resource. You could sit up as late as you pleased & you would not have any creditor dogging you for rent. I should not be in a bad box. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I should not be in so bad a box as many a man is in now.
Written January 28, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, pp. 297–298
I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.
Walden, p. 37
If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement. Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy,—chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man,—I will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physical system; and I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil’s attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth.
Walden, pp. 49–50
I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer.
Walden, p. 56
As I preferred some things to others, and especially valued my freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish to spend my time in earning rich carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet. If there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire these things, and who know how to use them when acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit.
Walden, p. 70
Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do.
Walden, p. 70
I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.
Walden, p. 70
Just before sundown we reached some more falls in the town of Bedford, where some stone-masons were employed repairing the locks in a solitary part of the river. They were interested in our adventures, especially one young man of our own age… and when he had heard our story, and examined our outfit, asked us other questions, but temperately still, and always turning to his work again, though as if it were become his duty. It was plain that he would like to go with us, and as he looked up the river, many a distant cape and wooded shore were reflected in his eye, as well as in his thoughts.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 234
What is produced by a free stroke charms us, like the forms of lichens and leaves. There is a certain perfection in accident which we never consciously attain.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 329
Now I yearn for one of those old meandering dry uninhabited roads which lead away from towns—which lead us away from temptation, which conduct to the outside of earth—over its uppermost crust—where you may forget in what country you are travelling—where no farmer can complain that you are treading down his grass—no gentleman who has recently constructed a seat in the country that you are trespassing—on which you can go off at half cock—and wave adieu to the village—along which you may travel like a pilgrim—going nowhither. Where travellers are not too oft en to be met. Where my spirit is free—
… There I have freedom in my thought & in my soul am free.
Written July 21, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, pp. 317–320
In short, all good things are wild and free.
“Walking” in Excursions, p. 210
Fig. 6. Thoreau to Daniel Ricketson, October 14, 1861. Reproduced from Daniel Ricketson and His Friends: Letters, Poems, Sketches, etc. The Walden Woods Project Collection at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods. Courtesy of the Walden Woods Project.
Two sturdy oaks I mean, which side by side,
Withstand the winter’s storm,
And spite of wind and tide,
Grow up the meadow’s pride,
For both are strong
Above they barely touch, but undermined
Down to their deepest source,
Admiring you shall find
Their roots are intertwined
Insep’rably.
“Friendship” in Collected Poems of Henry Thoreau, pp. 90–91
What a difference, whether, in all your walks, you meet only strangers, or in one house is one who knows you, and whom you know. To have a brother or a sister! To have a gold mine on your farm! To find diamonds in the gravel heaps before your door! How rare these things are! To share the day with you,—to people the earth. Whether to have a god or a goddess for companion in your walks, or to walk alone with hinds and villains and carles. Would not a friend enhance the beauty of the landscape as much as a deer or hare? Everything would acknowledge and serve such a relation; the corn in the field, and the cranberries in the meadow. The flowers would bloom, and the birds sing, with a new impulse. There would be more fair days in the year.
“Love” in Early Essays and Miscellanies, p. 273
Treat your friends for what you know them to be—regard no surfaces. Consider not what they did, but what they intended.
Written December 31, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 232
The language of friendship is not words but meanings. It is an intelligence above language.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 273
All that has been said of friendship is like botany to flowers.
Written between 1842 and 1844, in his Journal, vol. 2, p. 87
A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 267
It would give me such joy to know that a friend had come to see me and yet that pleasure I seldom if ever experience.
Written December 23, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 217
How is it that we are impelled to treat our old friends so ill when we obtain new ones?
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 260
I would that I were worthy to be any man’s Friend.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 265
I hate that my motive for visiting a friend should be that I want society. That it should lie in my poverty & weakness & not in his and my riches & strength.
Written February 14, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 350
Fatal is the discovery that our friend is fallible—that he has prejudices. He is then only prejudiced in our favor.
Written February 15, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 193
Some men may be my acquaintances merely but one whom I have been accustomed to regard to idealize to have dreams about as a friend & mix up intimately with myself can never degenerate into an acquaintance. I must know him on that higher ground or not know him at all.
Written November 24, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 150
The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 270
The Friend is some fair floating isle of palms eluding the mariner in Pacific seas. Many are the dangers to be encountered, equinoctial gales and coral reefs, ere he may sail before the constant trades. But who would not sail through mutiny and storm even over Atlantic waves, to reach the fabulous retreating shores of some continent man?
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 262
To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 266
How I love the simple, reserved countrymen, my neighbors, who mind their own business and let me alone, who never waylaid nor shot at me, to my knowledge, when I crossed their fields, though each one has a gun at his house! For nearly two score years I have known, at a distance, these long-suffering men, whom I never spoke to, who never spoke to me, and now I feel a certain tenderness for them, as if this long probation were but the prelude to an eternal friendship.
Written December 3, 1856, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 151; emended from manuscript Journal (MA 1302, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York)
I have never met with a friend who furnished me sea-room. I have only tacked a few times & come to anchor—not sailed—made no voyage—carried no venture.
Written August 24, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 310
There are times when we have had enough even of our Friends.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 272
My friend is one whom I meet, who takes me for what I am. A stranger takes me for something else than what I am.
Written October 23, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 382
How can they keep together who are going different ways!
Written July 12, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 302
I see two great fish hawks (possibly blue herons) slowly beating northeast against the storm, by what a curious tie circling ever near each other and in the same direction.… Where is my mate, beating against the storm with me?
Written October 26, 1857, in his Journal, vol. X, pp. 126–127
You may buy a servant or slave, in short, but you cannot buy a friend.
Written November 28, 1860, in his Journal, vol. XIV, p. 277
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
Written February 19, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 272
If I had never thought of you as a friend, I could make much use of you as an acquaintance.
Written January 31, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 313
What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers? I walk alone. My heart is full. Feelings impede the current of my thoughts. I knock on the earth for my friend. I expect to meet him at every turn; but no friend appears, and perhaps none is dreaming of me. I am tired of frivolous society, in which silence is forever the most natural and the best manners. I would fain walk on the deep waters, but my companions will only walk on shallows and puddles.
Written June 11, 1855, in his Journal, vol. VII, pp. 416–417
One complains that I do not take his jokes. I took them before he had done uttering them, and went my way.
One talks to me of his apples and pears, and I depart with my secret untold. His are not the apples that tempt me.
Written June 11, 1855, in his Journal, vol. VII, p. 417
I have some good friends from whom I am wont to part with disappointment for they neither care what I think nor mind what I say.
Written January 27, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 7, p. 251
In what concerns you much do not think that you have companions—know that you are alone in the world.
To H.G.O. Blake, March 27, 1848, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, pp. 216–217
Often, I would rather undertake to shoulder a barrel of pork and carry it a mile than take into my company a man. It would not be so heavy a weight upon my mind. I could put it down and only feel my back ache for it.
Written August 31, 1856, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 48
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Written on Staten Island to Lidian Emerson, May 22, 1843, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 103
The price of friendship is the total surrender of yourself; no lesser kindness, no ordinary attentions and offerings will buy it.
Written July 13, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 479
I sometimes awake in the night and think of friendship and its possibilities, a new life and revelation to me, which perhaps I had not experienced for many months. Such transient thoughts have been my nearest approach and realization of it, thoughts which I know of no one to communicate to.… I wake up in the night to these higher levels of life, as to a day that begins to dawn, as if my intervening life had been a long night. I catch an echo of the great strain of Friendship played somewhere, and feel compensated for months and years of commonplace.
Written July 13, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 480; emended from manuscript Journal (MA 1302, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York)
Woe to him who wants a companion for he is unfit to be the companion even of himself.
Written June 9, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 84
Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining.
Written December 21, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 213
There are enough who will flatter me with sweet words, and anon use bitter ones to balance them, but they are not my friends. Simple sincerity and truth are rare indeed.
Written September 9, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 341
We love to talk with those who can make a good guess at us—not with those who talk to us as if we were somebody else all the while.
Written September 9, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 341
Suspicion creates the stranger & substitutes him for the friend.
Written October 23, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 383
If my friend would take a quarter part the pains to show me himself that he does to show me a piece of roast beef, I should feel myself irresistibly invited.
Written May 19, 1856, in his Journal, vol. VIII, p. 348
I never realized so distinctly as this moment that I am peacefully parting company with the best friend I ever had, by each pursuing his proper path. I perceive that it is possible that we may have a better understanding now than when we were more at one. Not expecting such essential agreement as before. Simply our paths diverge.
Written January 21, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 274
I know but one with whom I can walk. I might as well be sitting in a bar room with them as walk and talk with most. We are never side by side in our thoughts & we cannot bear each other’s silence. Indeed we cannot be silent. We are forever breaking silence, that is all, and mending nothing.
Written July 12, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 302
I love my friends very much but I find that it is of no use to go to see them. I hate them commonly when I am near them. They belie themselves & deny me continually.
Written November 16, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 141
To obtain to a true relation to one human creature is enough to make a year memorable.
Written March 30, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 202
My Friend is not of some other race or family of men, but flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. He is my real brother.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 284
The only danger in Friendship is that it will end.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 277
What is called genius is the abundance of life or health so that whatever addresses the senses—as the flavor of these berries—or the lowing of that cow—which sounds as if it echoed along a cool mountain side just before night—where odoriferous dews perfume the air and there is everlasting vigor serenity & expectation of perpetual untarnished morning—each sight & sound & scent & flavor intoxicates with a healthy intoxication. The shrunken stream of life overflows its banks, makes & fertilizes broad intervals from which generations derive their sustenances. This is the true overflowing of the Nile. So exquisitely sensitive are we it makes us embrace our fates & instead of suffering or indifference, we enjoy & bless.
Written July 11, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 215
Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself—and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the race which pales before the light of common day.
“Walking” in Excursions, p. 208
I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.
Walden, p. 56
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity.
Written January 5, 1856, in his Journal, vol. VIII, p. 88
I would not stand between any man and his genius.
Walden, p. 73
Go not so far out of your way for a truer life—keep strictly onward in that path alone which your genius points out. Do the things which lie nearest to you but which are difficult to do.
Written January 12, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 249
Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.
Walden, p. 112
A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate. These winged thoughts are like birds, and will not be handled.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 339
Genius is the worst of lumber, if the poet would float upon the breeze of popularity.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 340
My genius makes distinctions which my understanding can not and which my senses do not report.
Written July 23, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 329
Be faithful to your genius.
Written December 20, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 211
The Man of Genius, referred to mankind, is an originator, an inspired or demonic man, who produces a perfect work in obedience to laws yet unexplored.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 328
There has been no man of pure Genius; as there has been none wholly destitute of Genius.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 328
No doubt it is an important difference between men of genius or poets, and men not of genius, that the latter are unable to grasp and confront the thought which visits them.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 341
Genius is inspired by its own works; it is hermaphroditic.
Written October 10, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 204
In all important crises one can only consult his genius.
Written December 27, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 379
For a companion, I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own genius.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 279
No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.
Walden, p. 216
The Good Genius is sure to prevail.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 116
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of any thing it is very likely to be my good behavior.
Walden, p. 10
All genuine goodness is original and as free from cant and tradition as the air.
Written June 16, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 425
Men have a singular desire to be good without being good for any thing, because, perchance, they think vaguely that so it will be good for them in the end.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 74
Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Walden, p. 218
It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 69
All good things are cheap—all bad are very dear.
Written March 3, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 277
There is no ill which may not be dissipated like the dark, if you let in a stronger light upon it. Overcome evil with good.
“The Service” in Reform Papers, p. 7
If I ever did a man any good, in their sense, of course it was something exceptional, and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am.
To H.G.O. Blake, February 27, 1853, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 297
Men invite the devil in at every angle and then prate about the garden of Eden and the fall of man.
Written November 5, 1855, in his Journal, vol. VIII, p. 8
Every one has a devil in him that is capable of any crime in the long run.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 284
Where an angel travels it will be paradise all the way, but where Satan travels it will be burning marl and cinders.
“Paradise (to be) Regained” in Reform Papers, p. 46
Be not simply good—be good for something.
To H.G.O. Blake, March 27, 1848, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 216
That certainly is the best government where the inhabitants are least oft en reminded of the government.
Written August 21, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 3
I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose, if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which I have also imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, pp. 89–90
Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong?
“A Plea for Captain John Brown” in Reform Papers, p. 136
It is not to be forgotten, that while the law holds fast the thief and murderer, it lets itself go loose.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 130
I went to the store the other day to buy a bolt for our front door, for, as I told the storekeeper, the Governor was coming here. “Aye,” said he, “and the Legislature too.” “Then I will take two bolts,” said I.
Written September 8, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, pp. 317–318
What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable,—I mean for us lucky white men,—is the fact that there is so much less government with us.
“A Yankee in Canada” in Excursions, p. 148
If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 89
A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever become the laughingstock of the world.
“Slavery in Massachusetts” in Reform Papers, p. 96
Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 64
If you aspire to anything better than politics, expect no coöperation from men.
Written April 3, 1858, in his Journal, vol. X, p. 351
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 76
The ring-leader of the mob will soonest be admitted into the councils of state.
Written February 12, 1840, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 108
I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—“That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 63
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, pp. 72–73
The poor President, what with preserving his popularity and doing his duty, is completely bewildered.
“Life without Principle” in Reform Papers, p. 178
Nobody legislates for me for the way would be not to legislate at all.
Written March 23, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 6, p. 31
Law never made men a whit more just.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 65
Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society—full of grit & gravel and the two political parties are its two opposite halves which grind on each other.
Written November 10, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 174
The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls—the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.
“Slavery in Massachusetts” in Reform Papers, p. 104
To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate the true state of things, the political state can hardly be said to have any existence whatever. It is unreal, incredible, and insignificant to him, and for him to endeavor to extract the truth from such lean material is like making sugar from linen rags, when sugar cane may be had.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 129
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. They are the lovers of law and order, who observe the law when the government breaks it.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 98
The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to,—for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well,—is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 89
It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man, or a musket to shoot one with,—the dollar is innocent,—but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 84
Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 64
The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 89
Why will men be such fools as to trust to lawyers for a moral reform?
Written June 16, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 200
But as for politics, what I most admire now-a-days, is not the regular governments but the irregular primitive ones, like the Vigilance committee in California and even the free state men in Kansas. They are the most divine.
To Thomas Cholmondeley, October 20, 1856, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 436
The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable—of a bad government to make it less valuable. We can afford that railroad and all merely material stock should depreciate—for that only compels us to live more simply & economically—but suppose the value of life itself should be depreciated.
Written June 16, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 198
In society you will not find health, but in nature.
“Natural History of Massachusetts” in Excursions, p. 4
To the healthy man the winter of his discontent never comes.
Written October 13, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 145
It is the faith with which we take medicine that cures us.
Written June 27, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 159
Nature, the earth herself, is the only panacea.
Written September 24, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 350
A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.
“A Winter Walk” in Excursions, p. 60
’Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.
Written after January 10, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 178
All nature is doing her best each moment to make us well—she exists for no other end. Do not resist her. With the least inclination to be well we should not be sick.
Written August 23, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 7, p. 16
Sickness should not be allowed to extend further than the body. We need only to retreat further within us, to preserve uninterrupted the continuity of serene hours to the end of our lives.
Written February 14, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, pp. 265–266
Cultivate the habit of early-rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.
Written June 8, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 82
The unwise are accustomed to speak as if some were not sick; but methinks the difference between men in respect to health is not great enough to lay much stress upon.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 36
It is a very remarkable and significant fact that though no man is quite well or healthy yet every one believes practically that health is the rule & disease the exception—And each invalid is wont to think of himself in a minority.
Written September 3, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 34
Disease is not the accident of the individual nor even of the generation but of life itself. In some form & to some degree or other it is one of the permanent conditions of life.
Written September 3, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 35
In sickness all is deranged. I had yesterday a kink in my back and a general cold, and as usual it amounted to a cessation of life. I lost for the time my rapport or relation to nature. Sympathy with nature is an evidence of perfect health.
Written November 18, 1857, in his Journal, vol. X, p. 188
I have noticed that notional nervous invalids, who report to the community the exact condition of their heads and stomachs every morning, as if they alone were blessed or cursed with these parts; who are old betties and quiddles, if men; who can’t eat their breakfasts when they are ready, but play with their spoons, and hanker after an ice-cream at irregular hours; who go more than half-way to meet any invalidity, and go to bed to be sick on the slightest occasion, in the middle of the brightest forenoon,—improve the least opportunity to be sick;—I observe that such are self-indulgent persons, without any regular and absorbing employment.
Written May 26, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 379
If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith to-day.
Written February 18, 1860, in his Journal, vol. XIII, p. 155
I have been sick so long that I have almost forgotten what it is to be well, yet I feel that it all respects only my envelope.
To Daniel Ricketson, August 15, 1861, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 625
Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature,—if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,—know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.
Written February 25, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 455
Men have discovered or think they have discovered the salutariness of a few wild things only and not of all nature. Why nature is but another name for health & the seasons are but different states of health. Some men think that they are not well in Spring or Summer or Autumn or Winter—it is only because they are not well in them.
Written August 23, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 7, p. 16
No doubt the healthiest man in the world is prevented from doing what he would like by sickness.
Written December 21, 1855, in his Journal, vol. VIII, p. 56
I am inclined to think of late that as much depends on the state of the bowels as of the stars.
Written December 12, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XIII, p. 22
The invalid brought to the brink of the grave by an unnatural life instead of imbibing only the great influence that nature is—drinks only the tea made of a particular herb—while he still continues his unnatural life—saves at the spile & wastes at the bung. He does not love nature or his life & so sickens & dies & no doctor can cure him.
Written August 23, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 7, pp. 15–16
Fig. 7. Thoreau’s flute. Photographer: Alfred W. Hosmer. Thoreau Society
Archives (The Thoreau Society® Collections at the Thoreau Institute).
Courtesy of the Thoreau Society.
In the midst of a gentle rain… I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since.
Walden, pp. 131–132
Far in the night, as we were falling asleep on the bank of the Merrimack, we heard some tyro beating a drum incessantly, in preparation for a country muster.… This stray sound from a far-off sphere came to our ears from time to time, far, sweet, and significant, and we listened with such an unprejudiced sense as if for the first time we heard at all.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 173
I used to strike with a paddle on the side of my boat on Walden Pond filling the surrounding woods with circling & dilating sound.… We wake the echo of the place we are in—its slumbering music.
Written after October 31, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 129
I should think that savages would have made a god of echo.
Written after October 31, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 129
The ringing of the church bell is a much more melodious sound than any that is heard within the church.
Written Sunday, January 2, 1842, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 355
The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer’s yard, informing me that many restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town, or adventurous country traders from the other side. As they come under one horizon, they shout their warning to get off the track to the other, heard sometimes through the circles of two towns.
Walden, p. 115
Each summer sound
Is a summer round.
Written February 19, 1838, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 30
Debauched and worn-out senses require the violent vibrations of an instrument to excite them, but sound and still youthful senses, not enervated by luxury, hear music in the wind and rain and running water. One would think from reading the critics that music was intermittent as a spring in the desert, depending on some Paganini or Mozart, or heard only when the Pierians or Euterpeans drive through the villages; but music is perpetual, and only hearing is intermittent.
Written February 8, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, pp. 244–245
Only in their saner moments do men hear the crickets. It is balm to the philosopher. It tempers his thoughts.
Written May 22, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 144
The earth song of the cricket! Before Christianity was, it is. Health, health, health, is the burden of its song.
Written June 17, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 105
The ring of the first toad leaks into the general stream of sound, unnoticed by most, as the mill-brook empties into the river and the voyager cannot tell if he is above or below its mouth. The bell was ringing for town meeting, and every one heard it, but none heard this older and more universal bell, rung by more native Americans all the land over.
Written May 1, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 349
What a contrast to sink your head so as to cover your ears with water, and hear only the confused noise of the rushing river, and then to raise your ears above water and hear the steady creaking of crickets in the aerial universe!
Written September 7, 1858, in his Journal, vol. XI, p. 150
I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side, as if deadened by the spring-like vapor which the sun is drawing from the ground. It mingles with the slight murmur of the village, the sound of children at play, as one stream empties gently into another, and the wild and tame are one. What a delicious sound. It is not merely crow calling to crow, for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears.
Written January 12, 1855, in his Journal, vol. VII, pp 112–113; emended from manuscript Journal (MA 1302, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York)
The other evening I was determined I would silence this shallow din; that I would walk in various directions and see if there was not to be found any depth of silence around. As Bonaparte sent out his horsemen in the Red Sea on all sides to find shallow water, so I sent forth my mounted thoughts to find deep water. I left the village and paddled up the river to Fair Haven Pond. As the sun went down, I saw a solitary boatman disporting on the smooth lake. The falling dews seemed to strain and purify the air, and I was soothed with an infinite stillness. I got the world, as it were, by the nape of the neck, and held it under in the tide of its own events, till it was drowned, and then I let it go downstream like a dead dog. Vast hollow chambers of silence stretched away on every side, and my being expanded in proportion and filled them. Then first could I appreciate sound, and find it musical.
To H.G.O. Blake, August 8, 1854, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 331
Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.
From an essay on “Sound and Silence” written in the latter half of December 1838 in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 60
I have been breaking silence these twenty three years and have hardly made a rent in it.
Written February 9, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 262
As I walk the railroad causeway I am disturbed by the sound of my steps on the frozen ground. I wish to hear the silence of the night. I cannot walk with my ears covered. The silence is something positive & to be heard. I must stand still & listen with open ear far from the noises of the village that the night may make its impression on me—a fertile & eloquent silence. Sometimes the silence is merely negative, an arid & barren waste in which I shudder—where no ambrosia grows. I must hear the whispering of a myriad voices. Silence alone is worthy to be heard.
Written January 21, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 448
The silence rings—it is musical & thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible—I hear the unspeakable.
Written January 21, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 448
The man I meet with is not oft en so instructive as the silence he breaks.
Written January 7, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 209
I mean always to spend only words enough to purchase silence with; and I have found that this, which is so valuable, though many writers do not prize it, does not cost much, after all.
To James Elliot Cabot, March 8, 1848, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 210
The longest silence is the most pertinent question most pertinently put. Emphatically silent. The most important questions whose answers concern us more than any are never put in any other way.
Written January 4, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 173
Listen to music religiously as if it were the last strain you might hear.
Written June 12, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 259
All music is only a sweet striving to express character.
Written November 12, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 341
So few habitually intoxicate themselves with music, so many with alcohol. I think, perchance, I may risk it, it will whet my senses so.
Written October 16, 1857, in his Journal, vol. X, p. 103
The music of all creatures has to do with their loves, even of toads & frogs. Is it not the same with man?
Written May 6, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 34
Each more melodious note I hear
Brings this reproach to me,
That I alone afford the ear,
Who would the music be.
“The Service” in Reform Papers, p. 9
I awoke into a music which no one about me heard. Whom shall I thank for it?
Written June 22, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 275
Music is the sound of the circulation in nature’s veins.
Written April 24, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 303
I sailed on the north river last night with my flute and my music was a tinkling stream which meandered with the river and fell from note to note as a brook from rock to rock.
Written August 18, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 320
Unpremeditated music is the true gage which measures the current of our thoughts—the very undertow of our life’s stream.
Written August 18, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 321
Even music is wont to be intoxicating.
Written after September 19, 1850, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 119
The music of all creatures has to do with their loves, even of toads & frogs. Is it not the same with man?
Written May 6, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 34
When I hear music I fear no danger, I am invulnerable, I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times and to the latest.
Written January 13, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 218
What is there in music that it should so stir our deeps? We are all ordinarily in a state of desperation; such is our life; oft times it drives us to suicide. To how many, perhaps to most, life is barely tolerable, and if it were not for the fear of death or of dying, what a multitude would immediately commit suicide! But let us hear a strain of music, we are at once advertised of a life which no man had told us of, which no preacher preaches. Suppose I try to describe faithfully the prospect which a strain of music exhibits to me. The field of my life becomes a boundless plain, glorious to tread, with no death nor disappointment at the end of it. All meanness and trivialness disappear. I become adequate to any deed. No particulars survive this expansion; persons do not survive it. In the light of this strain there is no thou nor I. We are actually lift ed above ourselves.
Written January 15, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 222
I hear one thrumming a guitar below stairs. It reminds me of moments that I have lived. What a comment on our life is the least strain of music! It lifts me up above all the dust and mire of the universe. I soar or hover with clean skirts over the field of my life. It is ever life within life, in concentric spheres. The field wherein I toil or rust at any time is at the same time the field for such different kinds of life! The farmer’s boy or hired man has an instinct which tells him as much indistinctly, and hence his dreams and his restlessness; hence, even, it is that he wants money to realize his dreams with. The identical field where I am leading my humdrum life, let but a strain of music be heard there, is seen to be the field of some unrecorded crusade or tournament the thought of which excites in us an ecstasy of joy. The way in which I am affected by this faint thrumming advertises me that there is still some health and immortality in the springs of me. What an elixir is this sound! I, who but lately came and went and lived under a dish cover, live now under the heavens. It releases me; it bursts my bonds.
Written January 13, 1857, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 217
A man’s life should be a stately march to a sweet but unheard music, and when to his fellows it shall seem irregular and inharmonious, he will only be stepping to a livelier measure; or his nicer ear hurry him into a thousand symphonies and concordant variations. There will be no halt ever but at most a marching on his post, or such a pause as is richer than any sound, when the melody runs into such depth and wildness as to be no longer heard, but implicitly consented to with the whole life and being. He will take a false step never, even in the most arduous times; for then the music will not fail to swell into greater sweetness and volume, and itself rule the movement it inspired.
Written June 30, 1840, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 146
You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.
Written April 27, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 89
Was awakened in the night to a strain of music dying away,—passing travellers singing. My being was so expanded and infinitely and divinely related for a brief season that I saw how unexhausted, how almost wholly unimproved, was man’s capacity for a divine life. When I remembered what a narrow and finite life I should anon awake to!
Written April 19, 1856, in his Journal, vol. VIII, p. 294
A thrumming of piano strings beyond the gardens & through the elms—at length the melody steals into my being. I know not when it began to occupy me. By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe—I am fitted to hear—my being moves in a sphere of melody—my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree. This is no longer the dull earth on which I stood.
Written August 3, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 272
We begin to have an interest in sun, moon, and stars.
Written August 31, 1839, and copied on June 21, 1840 into his Journal, vol. 1, p. 135
If there is nothing new on earth, still there is something new in the heavens. We have always a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types in this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth.
Written November 17, 1837, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 13
Truly the stars were given for a consolation to man.
“A Walk to Wachusett” in Excursions, p. 40
The heavens are as deep as our aspirations are high.
To H.G.O. Blake, May 2, 1848, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 220
When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring night.
Written July 26, 1840, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 158
The World run to see the panorama when there is a panorama in the sky which few go out to see.
Written January 17, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 264
I cannot see the bottom of the sky, because I cannot see to the bottom of myself. It is the symbol of my own infinity.
Written June 23, 1840, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 140
Only the Hunter’s & Harvest moons are famous but I think that each full moon deserves to be & has its own character well marked. One might be called the midsummer night moon.
Written June 11, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 252
A sky without clouds is a meadow without flowers.
Written June 24, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 142
The most beautiful thing in Nature is the sun reflected from a tear-ful cloud.
Written September 7, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 56
What form of beauty could be imagined more striking & conspicuous—An arch of the most brilliant & glorious colors completely spanning heavens before the eyes of men.
On rainbows, written August 6, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 5, p. 284
The sky is always ready to answer to our moods.
Written December 28, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 225
The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
“Walking” in Excursions, p. 202
When a noble deed is done, who is likely to appreciate it? They who are noble themselves.
“A Plea for Captain John Brown” in Reform Papers, p. 148
To march sturdily through life patiently and resolutely looking defiance at one’s foes, that is one way, but we cannot help being more attracted by that kind of heroism which relaxes its brows in the presence of danger, and does not need to maintain itself strictly, but by a kind of sympathy with the universe, generously adorns the scene and the occasion, and loves valor so well that itself would be the defeated party only to behold it.
“Sir Walter Raleigh” in Early Essays and Miscellanies, p. 217
Any landscape would be glorious to me, if I were assured that its sky was arched over a single hero.
Written September 26, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 101
A man sits as many risks as he runs.
Walden, p. 153
The monster is never just there where we think he is. What is truly monstrous is our cowardice and sloth.
To H.G.O. Blake, December 19, 1854, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 355
What is heroism? That which we are not.
“Sir Walter Raleigh” second draft manuscript (Walden Woods Project Collection at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods)
It was not the hero I admired but the reflection from his epaulet or helmet.
To H.G.O. Blake, February 27, 1853, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 299
If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear.
To H.G.O. Blake, December 19, 1854, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 354
Greatness is in the ascent.
Written February 7, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 256
Cowards suffer, heroes enjoy.
To H.G.O. Blake, May 20, 1860, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 579
Whatever your sex or position life is a battle in which you are to show your pluck & woe be to the coward.… Despair & postponement are Cowardice & defeat.
Written March 21, 1853, in his Journal, vol. 6, p. 23
He who receives an injury is an accomplice of the wrong doer.
Written July 9, 1840, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 154
The hero obeys his own law.
Written February 1, 1852, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 314
The great person never wants an opportunity to be great but makes occasion for all about him.
Written June 1, 1841, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 312
Most things are strong in one direction; a straw longitudinally; a board in the direction of its edge; a knee transversely to its grain; but the brave man is a perfect sphere, which cannot fall on its flat side, and is equally strong every way.
“The Service” in Reform Papers, pp. 5–6
Not to grieve long for any action but to go immediately and do freshly and otherwise subtracts so much from the wrong.
Written January 9, 1842, in his Journal, vol. 1, p. 363
Marching is when the pulse of the hero beats in unison with the pulse of Nature, and he steps to the measure of the universe; then there is true courage and invincible strength.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 175
You are expected to do your duty, not in spite of every thing but one, but in spite of everything.
Written September 24, 1859, in his Journal, vol. XII, p. 344
We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.
Walden, p. 77
What the prophets even have said is forgotten, and the oracles are decayed, but what heroes and saints have done is still remembered, and posterity will tell it again and again.
“Reform and the Reformers,” in Reform Papers, p. 185
Be of good courage! That is the main thing.
To H.G.O. Blake, December 19, 1854, in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, p. 354
What is wanted is men of principle who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority.
Written June 9, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 185
The Christians now & always are they who obey the higher law.
Written June 17, 1854, in his Journal, vol. 8, p. 204
He who lives according to the highest law is in one sense lawless.
Written February 27, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 201
No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.
Walden, p. 329
The unwritten laws are the most stringent.
Written September 6, 1851, in his Journal, vol. 4, p. 49
There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 89
What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I.
“Resistance to Civil Government” in Reform Papers, p. 81
Whoever has discerned truth, has received his commission from a higher source than the chiefest justice in the world, who can discern only law.
“Slavery in Massachusetts” in Reform Papers, p. 98
It is by obeying the suggestions of a higher light within you that you escape from yourself.
Written August 30, 1856, in his Journal, vol. IX, p. 38
What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity—who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.
“Slavery in Massachusetts” in Reform Papers, p. 104
