The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the character of individuals.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversThe unwise are accustomed to speak as if some were not sick; but methinks the different between men in respect to health is not great enough to lay much stress upon.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversThe value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.
—Journal, 26 November 1860The vast machine may indeed roll over our toes, and we not know it, but it would rebound and be staved to pieces like an empty barrel, if it should strike fair and square on the smallest and least angular of a man’s thoughts.
—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 26 September 1859The very sound of men’s work reminds, advertises, me of the coming of spring.
—Journal, 24 February 1852The very willow-rows lopped every three years for fuel or powder,—and every sizable pine and oak, or other forest tree, cut down within the memory of man! As if individual speculators were to be allowed to export the clouds out of the sky, or the stars out of the firmament, one by one. We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment.
—The Maine WoodsThe vice of manners is that they are continually deserted by the character. They are castoff clothes or shells claiming the respect of the living creature.
—Journal, 16 February 1851The Vishnu Purana says, “The house-holder is to remain at eventide in his courtyard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest.” I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the man approaching from the town.
—WaldenThe whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversThe wood still cheerfully and unsuspiciously echoes the strokes of the axe that fells it, and while they are few and seldom, they enhance its wildness, and all the elements strive to naturalize the sound.
—"A Winter Walk"The wood-thrush sang on the distant shore, and the laugh of some loons, sporting in a concealed western bay, as if inspired by morning, came distinct over the lake to us, and, what was remarkable, the echo which ran round the lake was much louder than the original note; probably because, the loons being in a regularly curving bay under the mountain, we were exactly in the focus of many echoes, the sound being reflected like light from a concave mirror.
—The Maine WoodsThe woodchopper reads the wisdom of the ages recorded on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe with it. When we ask for a scrap of paper for the most trivial use, it may have the confessions of Augustine or the sonnets of Shakespeare, and we not observe it. The student kindles his fire, the editor packs his trunk, the sportsman loads his gun, the traveler wraps his dinner, the Irishman papers his shanty, the schoolboy peppers the plastering, the belle pins up her hair, with the printed thoughts of men.
—Journal, 10 March 1856The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically.
—Walden