Henry David Thoreau’s diary, 1840

I know the world where land and water meet, By yonder hill abutting on the main; One while I hear the waves incessant beat, Then, turning round, survey the land…

By a strong liking we prevail Against the stoutest fort; At length the fiercest heart will quail, And our alliance court.

They are like air bubbles on water, hastening to flow together. History tells of Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, but why should not we put to shame those…

What a tame life we are living! How little heroic it is! Let us devise never so perfect a system of living, and straightway the soul leaves it to shuffle along its…

A friend in history looks like some premature soul. The nearest approach to a community of love in these days is like the distant breaking of waves on the seashore.…

"Truth," says Lord Bacon, "may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that sheweth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, which…

Opposition is often so strong a likeness as to remind us of the difference.

An act of integrity is to an act of duty what the French verb être is to devoir. Duty is ce que devrait être. Duty belongs to the understanding, but genius is not…

Beauty lives by rhymes. Double a deformity is a beauty. Draw this blunt quill over the paper, and fold it once transversely to the line, pressing it suddenly before…

The good seem to inhale a more generous atmosphere and be bathed in a more precious light than other men. Accordingly Virgil describes the sedes beatas thus:—…

Divination is prospective memory.

All romance is grounded on friendship. What is this rural, this pastoral, this poetical life but its invention? Does not the moon shine for Endymion? Smooth…

The coward's hope is suspicion, the hero's doubt a sort of hope. The gods neither hope nor doubt.

The river is unusually high, owing to the melting of the snow. Men go in boats over their gardens and potato-fields, and all the children of the village are on…

A stir is on the Worcester hills, And Nobscot too the valley fills; Where scarce you'd fill an acorn cup In summer when the sun was up, No more you'll find a cup at…

The most important events make no stir on their first taking place, nor indeed in their effects directly. They seem hedged about by secrecy. It is concussion, or…

Some geniuses seem to hover in the horizon, like heat lightning, which is not accompanied with fertilizing rain to us, but we are obliged to rest contented with the…

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill…

A friend advises by his whole behavior, and never condescends to particulars; another chides away a fault, he loves it away. While he sees the other's error, he is…

Love is the burden of all Nature's odes. The song of the birds is an epithalamium, a hymeneal. The marriage of the flowers spots the meadows and fringes the hedges…

I learned to-day that my ornithology had done me no service. The birds I heard, which fortunately did not come within the scope of my science, sung as freshly as if…

There is no delay in answering great questions; for them all things have an answer ready. The Pythian priestess gave her answers instantly, and ofttimes before the…

The wind shifts from northeast and east to northwest and south, and every icicle which has tinkled on the meadow grass so long trickles down its stem and seeks its…

The cabins of the settlers are the points whence radiate these rays of green and yellow and russet over the landscape; out of these go the axes and spades with…

In society all the inspiration of my lonely hours seems to flow back on me, and then first have expression. Love never degrades its votaries, but lifts them up to…

The world is a fit theatre to-day in which any part may be acted. There is this moment proposed to me every kind of life that men lead anywhere, or that imagination…

While I bask in the sun on the shores of Walden Pond, by this heat and this rustle I am absolved from all obligation to the past. The council of nations may…

How many are now standing on the European coast whom another spring will find located on the Red River, or Wisconsin! To-day we live an antediluvian life on our…

Pray, what things interest me at present? A long, soaking rain, the drops trickling down the stubble, while I lay drenched on a last year's bed of wild oats, by the…

We look to windward for fair weather.

How shall I help myself? By withdrawing into the garret, and associating with spiders and mice, determining to meet myself face to face sooner or later. Completely…

I read in Cudworth how "Origen determines that the stars do not make but signify; and that the heavens are a kind of divine volume, in whose characters they that…

Farewell, etiquette! My neighbor inhabits a hollow sycamore, and I a beech tree. What then becomes of morning calls with cards, and deference paid to door-knockers…

The infinite bustle of Nature of a summer's noon, or her infinite silence of a summer's night, gives utterance to no dogma. They do not say to us even with a seer's…

The universe will not wait to be explained. Whoever seriously attempts a theory of it is already behind his age. His yea has reserved no nay for the morrow. The…

Thales was the first of the Greeks who taught that souls are immortal, and it takes equal wisdom to discern this old fact to-day. What the first philosopher taught,…

A kind act or gift lays us under obligation not so much to the giver as to Truth and Love. We must then be truer and kinder ourselves. Just in proportion to our…

We had appointed Saturday, August 31st, 1839, for the commencement of our White Mountain expedition. We awake to a warm, drizzling rain which threatens delay to our…

Λόγος τοῦ ἔργου ἄνευ ὕλης.—Aristotle's definition of art. Ὅ χρή σε νοεῖν νόου ἄνθει.—Chaldaic Oracles. Ἐγώ εἰμι πᾶν τὸ γεγονὸν, καὶ ὂν, καὶ ἐσόμενον, καὶ τὸν ἐμὸν…

I stood by the river to-day considering the forms of the elms reflected in the water. For every oak and birch, too, growing on the hilltop, as well as for elms and…

The river down which we glided for that long afternoon was like a clear drop of dew with the heavens and the landscape reflected in it. And as evening drew on,…

Our lives will not attain to be spherical by lying on one or the other side forever; but only by resigning ourselves to the law of gravity in us, will our axis…

I should be pleased to meet man in the woods. I wish he were to be encountered like wild caribous and moose.

The other day I rowed in my boat a free, even lovely young lady, and, as I plied the oars, she sat in the stern, and there was nothing but she between me and the…

Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds. A spring is a cynosure in the fields. All Muscovy glitters in…

I shall not soon forget my first night in a tent,—how the distant barking of dogs for so many still hours revealed to me the riches of the night. Who would not be a…

What a man knows, that he does.

We Yankees are not so far from right, who answer one question by asking another. Yes and No are lies. A true answer will not aim to establish anything, but rather…

When I read Cudworth I find I can tolerate all,—atomists, pneumatologists, atheists, and theists,—Plato, Aristotle, Leucippus, Democritus, and Pythagoras. It is the…

Let me see no other conflict but with prosperity. If my path run on before me level and smooth, it is all a mirage; in reality it is steep and arduous as a chamois…

The best poetry has never been written, for when it might have been, the poet forgot it, and when it was too late remembered it; or when it might have been, the…

I am living this 27th of June, 1840, a dull, cloudy day and no sun shining. The clink of the smith's hammer sounds feebly over the roofs, and the wind is sighing…

The prophane never hear music; the holy ever hear it. It is God's voice, the divine breath audible. Where it is heard, there is a sabbath. It is omnipotent; all…

Of all phenomena, my own race are the most mysterious and undiscoverable. For how many years have I striven to meet one, even on common manly ground, and have not…

I sailed from Fair Haven last evening as gently and steadily as the clouds sail through the atmosphere. The wind came blowing blithely from the southwest fields,…

To be a man is to do a man's work; always our resource is to endeavor. We may well say, Success to our endeavors. Effort is the prerogative of virtue. The true…

I am not taken up, like Moses, upon a mountain to learn the law, but lifted up in my seat here, in the warm sunshine and genial light.

When Alexander appears, the Hercynian and Dodonean woods seem to wave a welcome to him.

4 o'clock, A. M. The Townsend Light Infantry encamped last night in my neighbor's inclosure. The night still breathes slumberously over field and wood, when a few…

Go where we will, we discover infinite change in particulars only, not in generals.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

I have experienced such simple joy in the trivial matters of fishing and sporting, formerly, as might inspire the muse of Homer and Shakespeare. And now, when I…

Doubt and falsehood are yet good preachers. They affirm roundly, while they deny partially.

In most men's religion the ligature which should be its muscle and sinew is rather like that thread which the accomplices of Cylon held in their hands, when they…

To myself I am as pliant as osier, and my courses seem not so easy to be calculated as Encke's comet; but I am powerless to bend the character of another; he is…

The true art is not merely a sublime consolation and holiday labor which the gods have given to sickly mortals, to be wrought at in parlors, and not in stithies…

What first suggested that necessity was grim, and made fate so fatal? The strongest is always the least violent. Necessity is a sort of Eastern cushion on which I…

Our discourse should be ex tempore, but not pro tempore.

We are as much refreshed by sounds as by sights, or scents, or flavors,—as the barking of a dog heard in the woods at midnight, or the tinklings which attend the…

These two days that I have not written in my Journal, set down in the calendar as the 17th and 18th of July, have been really an æon in which a Syrian empire might…

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…

Some men, like some buildings, are bulky but not great. The Pyramids any traveller may measure with his line, but the dimensions of the Parthenon in feet and inches…