There is some of the same fitness in a man’s building his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own nest.
—WaldenThere is something more respectable than railroads in these simple relics of the Indian race. What hieroglyphs shall we add to the pipe-stone quarry?
—Journal, 7 July 1845There is something sublime in the fact that some of the oldest written sentences should thus celebrate the coming in of spring.
—Journal, 9 July 1852There is unquestionably this instinct in me which belongs to the lower orders of creation; yet with every year I am less a fisherman, though without more humanity or even wisdom; at present I am no fisherman at all. But I see that if I were to live in a wilderness I should again be tempted to become a fisher and hunter in earnest.
—WaldenThere must be some narrowness in the soul that compels one to have secrets.
—Journal, 21 February 1842There was a remarkable sunset, I think the 25th of October. The sunset sky reached quite from west to east, and it was the most varied in its forms and colors of any that I remember to have seen.
—Journal, 12 November 1859There would be this advantage in traveling in your own country, even in your own neighborhood, that you would be so thoroughly prepared to understand what you saw you would make fewer traveler’s mistakes.
—Journal, 12 June 1851These earthly sounds should only die away for a season, as the strains of the harp rise and swell. Death is that expressive pause in the music of the blast.
—Journal, 29 December 1841These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversThese two are prevailing grasses at this season on dry and sandy fields and hillsides. The culms of both, not to mention their pretty flowers, reflect a purple tinge, and help declare the ripeness of the year.
—"Autumnal Tints"They appeared to lie by magic on the side of the vale, like a mirror left in a slanting position.
—Cape CodThey are of sick and diseased imagination who would toll the world’s knell so soon.
—"Natural History of Massachusetts"They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man’s discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.
—WaldenÂThey, methinks, are poor stuff and creatures of a miserable fate who can be advised and persuaded in very important steps.
—Journal, 27 December 1858This is a common experience in my traveling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious.
—Journal, 17 June 1857This is one of those dateless benefits conferred on man, which have no record in our vulgar day, though we still find some similitude to them in our dreams, in which we have a more liberal and juster apprehension of things, unconstrained by habit, which is then in some measure put off, and divested of memory, which we call history.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversThis life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.
—Thoreau to Daniel Ricketson, 4 November 1860This life we live is a strange dream, and I don’t believe at all any account men give of it.
—Thoreau to Mrs. Cynthia (Dunbar) Thoreau, 6 August 1843