Henry David Thoreau Quotations: HEAVEN & EARTH
When in rare moments our whole being strives with one consent, which we name a yearning, we may not hope that our work will stand in any artist's gallery on earth.—"The Service"
When my eye ranges over some 30 miles of this globe's surface,—an eminence—green and waving with sky and mountains to bound it,—I am richer than Croesus.—Journal, 12 May 1850
When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop.—Walden
When the common man looks into the sky, which he has not so much profaned, he thinks it less gross than the earth, and with reverence speaks of “the Heavens,” but the seer will in the same sense speak of “the Earths,” and his Father who is in them.—Walden
When you travel to the celestial city, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock ask to see God—none of the servants.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 27 March 1848
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them,—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a library,—aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature.—Cape Cod
Words should pass between friends as the lightning passes from cloud to cloud.—Journal, 20 March 1842
You see the moonlight reflected from particular stumps in the recesses of the forest, as if she selected what to shine on.—"Night and Moonlight"
