Henry David Thoreau Quotations: OBSERVATIONS
We have the silver and the golden birch. This is like a fair, flaxen-haired sister of the dark-complexioned black birch, with golden ringlets. How lustily it takes hold of the swampy soil, and braces itself! And here flows a dark cherry-wood or wine-colored brook over the iron-red sands in the somber swamp,—swampy wine. In an undress, this tree. Ah, time will come when these will be all gone.—Journal, 4 January 1853
We inspire friendship in men when we have contracted friendship with the gods.—Journal, June 1850
We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches.—Walden
We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is the color of colors.—"Autumnal Tints"
We love to talk with those who can make a good guess at us—not with those who talk to us as if we were somebody else all the while.—Journal, 9 September 1852
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in out soundest sleep.—Walden
We must look for a long time before we can see.—"Natural History of Massachusetts"
We rowed leisurely up the stream for several hours, until the sun had got high in the sky, our thoughts monotonously beating time to our oars. For outward variety there was only the river and the receding shores, a vista continually opening behind and closing before us, as we sat with our backs up-stream; and, for inward, such thoughts as the muses grudgingly lent us.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We should read history as little critically as we consider the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create, than by its groundwork and composition. It is the morning now turned evening and seen in the west,—the same sun, but a new light and atmosphere. Its beauty is like the sunset; not a fresco painting on a wall, flat and bounded, but atmospheric and roving or free.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We, too, are out, obeying the same law with all nature. Not less important are the observers of the birds than the birds themselves.—Journal, 20 March 1858
