the Thoreau Log.
26 July 1852. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.  

  The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky. in your higher moods what man is there to meet? You are of necessity isolated. The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society. My desire for society is infinitely increased; my fitness for any actual society is diminished.

Went to Cambridge and Boston to-day . . .

(Journal, 4:258-260)

Thoreau writes to William H. Sweetser:

Wm H. Sweetser  This is the way I write when I have a poor pen and still poorer ink.

Yrs,
Henry D. Thoreau

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 287)

Thoreau also writes to H.G.O. Blake:

Mr. Blake,  

  Here come the sentences which I promised you. You may keep them if you will regard & use them as the disconnected fragments of what I may find to be a completer essay, on looking over my journal at last, and may claim again.

  I send you the thoughts on chastity & sensuality with diffidence and shame, not knowing how far I speak to the condition o£ men generally, or how far I betray my peculiar defects. Pray enlighten me on this point if you can.

Henry D. Thoreau

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 288)

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