Henry David Thoreau Quotations: LAND & WATER
A book should be so true as to be intimate and familiar to all men as the sun to their faces. Such a word as is occasionally uttered to a companion in the woods in summer, and both are silent.—Journal, 4 September 1841
A man at work on the Ledum Pool, draining it, says that, when they had ditched about six feet deep, or to the bottom, near the edge of this swamp, they came to old flags, and he thought that the whole swamp was ounce a pond and the flag grew by the edge of it.—Journal, 22 October 1858
A man can never say of any landscape that he has exhausted it.—Journal, 19 April 1850
A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge, which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods.—Walden
A sky without clouds is a meadow without flowers.—Journal, 24 June 1852
Ah dear nature—the mere remembrance, after a short forgetfulness, of the pine woods! I come to it as a hungry man to a crust of bread.—Journal, 12 December 1851
Ah! I need solitude. I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon—to behold and commune with something grander than man. Their mere distance and unprofanedness is an infinite encouragement. It is with infinite yearning and aspiration that I seek solitude, more and more resolved and strong; but with a certain weakness that I seek society ever.—Journal, 14 August 1854
All distant landscapes seen from hill tops are veritable pictures which will be found to have no actual existence to him who travels to them.—Journal, 1 May 1851
All our Concord waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand.—Walden
Almost the very sands confess the ripening influence of the August sun, and methinks, together with the slender grasses waving over them, reflect a purple tinge.—"Autumnal Tints"
