The world is a cow that is hard to milk,—life does not come so easy,—and ah, how thinly it is watered ere we get it! But the young bunting calf, he will get at it. There is no way so direct.
—Thoreau to R.W. Emerson, 14 November 1847The World run to see the panorama when there is a panorama in the sky which few go out to see.
—Journal, 17 January 1852The writer needs the suggestion and correction that a correspondent or companion is.
—Journal, 23 August 1858Then the gentle, spring-like rain begins, and we turn about. The sounds of it pattering on the dry oak leaves . . .
—Journal, 14 February 1859There are enough who will flatter me with sweet words, and anon use bitter ones to balance them, but they are not my friends. Simple sincerity and truth are rare indeed.
—Journal, 9 September 1852There are few men who do not love better to give advise than to give assistance.
—Journal, 4 June 1850There are infinite degrees of life, from that which is next to sleep and death, to that which is forever awake and immortal. We must not confound man and man. We cannot conceive of a greater difference than between the life of one man and that of another.
—Journal, 13 January 1857There are new and patented inventions in this shape, purporting to be for the elevation of the race, which many a pure scholar and genius who has learned to read is for a moment deceived by, and finds himself reading a horse-rake, or spinning-jenny, or wooden nutmeg, or oak-leaf cigar, or steam-power press, or kitchen range, perchance, when he was seeking serene and biblical truths.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversThere are odors enough in nature to remind you of everything if you had lost every sense but smell.
—Journal, 6 May 1852There are some who never do or say anything, whose life merely excites expectation. Their excellence reaches no further than a gesture or mode of carrying themselves. They are a sash dangling from the waist, or a sculptured war-club over the shoulder. They are like fine-edged tools gradually becoming rusty in a shop-window. I like as well, if not better, to see a piece of iron or steel, out of which many such tools will be made, or the bush-whack in a man’s hand.
—Journal, 10 March 1859There are times when we have had enough even of our Friends.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversThere are two classes of authors—the one write the history of their times; the other their biography.
—Journal, 20 April 1841There are various, nay incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them?
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers