Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Change
Then the gentle, spring-like rain begins, and we turn about. The sounds of it pattering on the dry oak leaves . . .—Journal, 14 February 1859
There are some who never do or say anything, whose life merely excites expectation. Their excellence reaches no further than a gesture or mode of carrying themselves. They are a sash dangling from the waist, or a sculptured war-club over the shoulder. They are like fine-edged tools gradually becoming rusty in a shop-window. I like as well, if not better, to see a piece of iron or steel, out of which many such tools will be made, or the bush-whack in a man’s hand.—Journal, 10 March 1859
There was a remarkable sunset, I think the 25th of October. The sunset sky reached quite from west to east, and it was the most varied in its forms and colors of any that I remember to have seen.—Journal, 12 November 1859
Things do not change; we change.—Walden
To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery. Who chains me to this dull town?—"Resistance to Civil Government"
Truth is ever returning into herself. I glimpse one feature to-day, another to-morrow; and the next day they are blended.—Journal, 13 November 1837
We are constantly invited to be what we are; as to something worthy and noble. I never waited but for myself to come round; none ever detained me, but I lagged or tagged after myself.—Journal, 2 February 1841
We are independent of the change we detect.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We are most apt to remember and cherish the flowers which appear earliest in the spring. I look with equal affection on those which are the latest to bloom in the fall.—Journal, 31 August 1850
We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is the color of colors.—"Autumnal Tints"
