Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Senses
We remember autumn to best advantage in the spring; the finest aroma of it reaches us then.—Journal, 9 May 1852
We seem to hear the music of a thought, and care not if the understanding be not gratified.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
When the common man looks into the sky, which he has not so much profaned, he thinks it less gross than the earth, and with reverence speaks of “the Heavens,” but the seer will in the same sense speak of “the Earths,” and his Father who is in them.—Walden
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them,—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a library,—aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature.—Cape Cod
Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
