Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Sky
A man may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he walked under a shed.—Journal, 21 August 1851
Any landscape would be glorious to me, if I were assured that its sky was arched over a single hero.—Journal, 26 September 1851
As it is, each takes us up into the serene heavens, whither the smallest bubble rises as surely as the largest, and paints earth and sky for us. Any sincere thought is irresistible.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
I cannot see the bottom of the sky, because I cannot see to the bottom of myself. It is the symbol of my own infinity.—Journal, 23 June 1840
I make it my business to extract from Nature whatever nutriment she can furnish me though at the risk of endless iteration. I milk the sky and the earth.—Journal, 3 November 1853
Looking southward, the heavens were completely overcast, the mountains capped with clouds, and the lake generally wore a dark and stormy appearance, but from its surface six or eight miles distant there was reflected upward through the misty air a bright blue tinge from the unseen sky of another latitude beyond.—The Maine Woods
Most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum—many for a glass of rum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!—Journal, 3 January 1861
Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs.—Walden
The sky is always ready to answer to our moods.—Journal, 28 December 1851
The very willow-rows lopped every three years for fuel or powder,—and every sizable pine and oak, or other forest tree, cut down within the memory of man! As if individual speculators were to be allowed to export the clouds out of the sky, or the stars out of the firmament, one by one. We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment.—The Maine Woods
