All the laws of nature will bend and adapt themselves to the least motion of man.
—Journal, 1837-1846All true greatness runs as level a course, and is as unaspiring, as the plow in the furrow. It wears the homeliest dress and speaks the homeliest language.
—Journal, 29 December 1841All we have experienced is so much gone within us and there lies. It is the company we keep.
—Journal, 8 February 1841Almost the very sands confess the ripening influence of the August sun, and methinks, together with the slender grasses waving over them, reflect a purple tinge.
—"Autumnal Tints"Already, by the first of September, I had seen two or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where the white stems of three aspens diverged, at the point of a promontory, next the water. Ah, many a tale their color told!
—WaldenAlways there is life which, rightly lived, implies a divine satisfaction.
—Journal, 14 November 1839An island always pleases my imagination, even the smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of the globe.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversAncient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more modern. It is written as if the spectator should be thinking of the backside of the picture on the wall, or as if the author expected that the dead would be his readers, and wished to detail to them their own experience.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversAnciently the faith of a philosopher was identical with his system, or, in other words, his view of the universe.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversAnd as for advice, the information floating in the atmosphere of society is an evanescent and unserviceable to him as gossamer for clubs of Hercules.
—"Paradise (to be) Regained"And do we live but in the present? How broad a line is that?
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversÂ[A]nd even the sepals from which the birds have picked the berries are a brilliant lake-red, with crimson flame-like reflections, equal to anything of the kind,—all on fire with ripeness.
—"Autumnal Tints"And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.
—WaldenAnd, above all, there is this difference between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist this with some effect; but I cannot expect, like Orpheus, to change the nature of the rocks and trees and beasts.
—"Civil Disobedience"Any landscape would be glorious to me, if I were assured that its sky was arched over a single hero.
—Journal, 26 September 1851Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers