Most men have no inclination, no rapids, no cascades, but marshes, and alligators, and miasma instead.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversMost men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine.
—WaldenMost men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum—many for a glass of rum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!
—Journal, 3 January 1861Most things are strong in one direction, a straw longitudinally, a board in the direction of its edge, but he brave man is a perfect sphere, which cannot fall on its flat side and is equally strong every way.
—"The Service"Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversMusic is the sound of the circulation in nature’s veins. It is the flux which melts nature.
—Journal, 24 April 1841Music soothes the din of philosophy and lightens incessantly over the heads of sages.
—Journal, 23 June 1840Music wafts me through the clear, sultry valleys, with only a slight gray vapor against the hills.
—Journal, 8 January 1842My actual life is a fact, in view of which I have no occasion to congratulate myself; but for my faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from these that I speak. Every man’s position is in fact too simple to be described.
—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 27 March 1848My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.
—"Walking"My friend is cold and reserved because his love for me is waxing and not waning.
—Journal, 20 March 1842My Friend is not of some other race or family of men, but flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. He is my real brother.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversMy friend is one whom I meet, who takes me for what I am. A stranger takes me for something else than what I am.
—Journal, 23 October 1852My furniture, part of which I made myself—and the rest cost me nothing of which I have not rendered an account—consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp.
—WaldenMy genius makes distinctions which my understanding can not and which my senses do not report.
—Journal, 23 July 1851My imagination, my love and reverence and admiration, my sense of miraculous, is not so excited by any event as by the remembrance of my youth.
—Journal, June 1850