Henry David Thoreau Quotations: OBSERVATIONS
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.—Journal, 13 June 1851
There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i.e. to be significant, must be subjective.—Journal, 6 May 1854
There 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 1859
These 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 Cod
Things do not change; we change.—Walden
This 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 1857
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.—Journal, 29 July 1850
To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery. Who chains me to this dull town?—"Resistance to Civil Government"
To walk in a winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the feebler notes of other birds,—think of it!—Walden
