Henry David Thoreau Quotations: OBSERVATIONS
A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us . . . A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.—Journal, 23 February 1860
A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me.—Journal, 21 May 1851
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 is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.—Walden
A man may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he walked under a shed.—Journal, 21 August 1851
A queen might be proud to walk where these gallant trees have spread their bright cloaks in the mud. I see wagons roll over them as a shadow or reflection, and the drivers heed them just as little as they did their own shadows before.—"Autumnal Tints"
A thrumming of piano-strings beyond the gardens and through the elms. At length the melody steals into my being. I know not when it began to occupy me. By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree. This is no longer the dull earth on which I stood.—Journal, 3 August 1852
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.—Journal, 20 August 1851
After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and course. A hard, insensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rock, whose hearts are comparatively soft.—Journal, 15 November 1853
Ah, that l have known! How hard it is to remember what is most memorable! We remember how we itched, not how our hearts beat.—Journal, 11 June 1851
