I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to
brag as lustily as a chanticleer in the morning, standing on his
roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. Walden, 1854.
We go on dating from
Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or greater
snow, would put a period to man's existence on the
globe.
Ibid.
As if
you could kill time without injuring eternity. Ibid.
Perhaps no one dreamed of Snipe an hour ago, the
air seemed empty of such as they; but as soon as the dusk begins, so
that a bird's flight is concealed, you hear this peculiar
spirit-suggesting sound, now heard through and above the evening din
of the village. Ibid.
Why should we be in such
desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a
man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he
hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away. Ibid..
For many years I was
self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my
duty faithfully. Ibid.
The
swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot. Ibid.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of
evil to one who is striking at the root. Ibid.
To be awake is
to be alive. Ibid.
I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I
could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived. Ibid.
Time is
but the stream I go a-fishing in. Ibid.
I never found the
companion that was so companionable as solitude. Ibid.
I had three chairs in my house: one for
solitude, two for friendship, three for society. Ibid.
Every man is the
builder of a temple, called his body. Ibid.
If one advances confidently in the direction of
his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he
will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. Ibid.
In warm
evenings, I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, and saw the
perch, which I seemed to have charmed, hovering around me, and the
moon travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the
wrecks of the forest. Ibid.
Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time
so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky
water. It needs no fence . . . It is a mirror which no
stone can crack, whose quicksilver will
never wear off, whole gilding Nature continually repairs . . .
Ibid.
No humane being,
past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any
creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The
hare in its extremity cried like a child. Ibid.
The true harvest
of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the
tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a
segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. Ibid.
The surface of the
earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the
paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the
highways of the world - how deep the ruts of tradition and
conformity! Ibid.
Only that day
dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is
but a morning star. Ibid.
The setting
sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as
from the rich man's abode. Ibid.
The earth
is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the
leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries
chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede
flowers and fruit&endash;not a fossil earth, but a living earth;
compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life
is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviae from their
graves. Ibid.
A lake is the landscape's
most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking
into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.
Ibid.
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. Ibid.
We can never have
enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible
vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the
wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud,
and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need
to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing
freely where we never wander. Ibid.
. . . a man is rich
in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to leave
alone.
Ibid.
I
learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances
confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the
life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in
common hours. Ibid.
If you have built castles in
the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them. Ibid.
The universe is wider than our
views of it.
Ibid.
It is never to late to give up our prejudices. Ibid.
I am no more
lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden
Pond itself. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion
in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horsefly, or a
bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock,
or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a
January thaw, or the first spider in a new house. Ibid.
Thank God, they
cannot cut down the clouds. - In a
conversation.
In wilderness is the preservation of the world. 1862,
"Walking."
