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The Thoreau Institute
at Walden Woods Library
Thoreau's
Life & Writings
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Henry D. Thoreau Quotation Pages
On Observing
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Many an object is
not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray,
because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray,
i.e. we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we
find only the world we look for. [Journal, 2 July 1857]
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What I see is mine.
[A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers]
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There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your
observation, to be interesting, i.e. to be significant, must be
subjective. The sum of what the writer of what ever class has to
report is simply some human experience, whether he be poet or
philosopher or man of science. The man of most science is the man
most alive, whose life is the greatest event. Senses that take
cognizance of outward things merely are of no avail . It matters not
where or how far you travel―the
farther commonly the worse―but
how much alive you are. If it is possible to conceive of an event
outside to humanity, it is not of the slightest significance, though
it were the explosion of a planet . Every important worker will
report what life there is in him. It makes no odds into what seeming
deserts the poet is born. Though all his neighbors pronounce it a
Sahara, it will be a paradise to him; for the desert which we see is
the result of the barrenness of our experience. [Journal, 6
May 1854]
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The question is not
what you look at, but what you see. [Journal, 5 August 1851]
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We must look for
a long time before we can see. ["Natural History of Massachusetts"]
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Could a greater
miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for
an instant? [Walden, "Economy"]
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Carlyle said that
how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and
the more you look the less you will observe. [Journal, 13
September 1852]
A
Note on the Text:
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Source:
Unless otherwise noted, quotations are from The Writings of Henry
David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906)
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Report
errors to the
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