(1817–1862)
U.S. author, poet, and naturalist
Henry David Thoreau
By moonlight all is simple. We are enabled to erect ourselves, our minds, on account of the fewness of objects. We are no longer distracted. It is simple bread and water.
Autumn: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, ed. H. G. O. Blake (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1892), 3–4.
To effect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” in Walden (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1910), 117.
I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a humble-bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.
“Solitude,” in Walden: or, Life in the Woods (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, 1899), 156.
When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. They who come rarely to the woods take some little piece of the forest into their hands to play with by the way, which they leave, either intentionally or accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my table. I could always tell if visitors had called in my absence, either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of what sex or age or quality they were by some slight trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified of the passage of a traveler along the highway sixty rods off by the scent of his pipe.
Henry David Thoreau, “Solitude,” in Walden: or, Life in the Woods (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, 1899), 147–48.
Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light,—to see its perfect success.
The Maine Woods (Boston, MA: Ticknor and Fields, 1864), 123–24.
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.
Walden (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1904), 50.
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
The Journal 1837–1861 (New York: New York Review of Books, 2009), 7.
The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?
The Journal 1837–1861 (New York: New York Review of Books, 2009), 539.
When you have been deprived of your usual quantity of sleep for several nights, you sleep much more soundly for it, and wake up suddenly like a bullet that strikes a wall.
The Journal 1837–1861 (New York: New York Review of Books, 2009), 539.