I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it, by what means to grow rich, that the day may not have been in vain.
—Journal, 7 September 1851I don’t want to feel as if my life were a sojourn any longer. That philosophy cannot be true which so paints it. It is time now that I begin to live.
—Journal, 25 December 1841I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence.
—Journal, 17 May 1858I enter a swamp as a sacred place—a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength—the marrow of Nature.
—"Walking"I exclaim to myself, Surfaces! surfaces! If the outside of a man is so variegated and extensive, what must the inside be?
—Journal, 10 March 1859I expect the Christian not to be superstitious but to be distinguished by the clearness of his knowledge, the strength of his faith, the breadth of his humanity.
—Journal, 25 September 1851I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!
—"Wild Apples"I fear the dissipation that traveling, going into society, even the best, the enjoyment of intellectual luxuries, imply.
—Journal, 10 March 1856I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient.
—"Life Without Principle"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone.
—WaldenI find that actual events, notwithstanding the singular prominence which we all allow them, are far less real than the creations of my imagination.
—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 9 August 1850I had a thought in a dream last night which surprised me by its strangeness, as if it were based on an experience in a previous state of existence, and could not be entertained by my waking self. Both the thought and the language were equally novel to me, but I at once perceived it to be true and to coincide with my experience in this state.
—Journal, 23 November 1852I had another friend, who, through a slight obtuseness, perchance, did not recognize a fact which the dignity of friendship would by no means allow me to descend so far as to speak of, and yet the inevitable effect of that ignorance was to hold us apart forever.
—Journal, 4 March 1856I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.
—WaldenI had two friends. The one offered me friendship on such terms that I could not accept it, without a sense of degradation.
—Journal, 4 March 1856I hate that my motive for visiting a friend should be that I want society; that it should lie in my poverty and weakness, and not in his and my riches and strength.
—Journal, 14 February 1852