in Thoreau’s Journal:

The poke is a very rich and striking plant. Some which stand under the Cliffs quite dazzled me with their now purple stems gracefully drooping each way, their rich, somewhat yellowish, purple-veined leaves, their bright purple racemes, —peduncles, and pedicels, and calyx-like petals from which the birds have picked the berries (these racemes, with their petals now turned to purple, are more brilliant than anything of the kind), — flower-buds, flowers, ripe berries and dark purple ones, and calyx-like petals which have lost their fruit, all on the same plant. I love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is the richest color. I love to press these berries between my fingers and see their rich purple wine staining my hand. It asks a bright sun on it to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at this season of the year. It speaks to my blood. Every part of it is flower, such is its superfluity of color, —a feast of color. That is the richest flower which most abounds in color. What need to taste the fruit, to drink the wine, to him who can thus taste and drink with his eyes? Its boughs, gracefully drooping, offering repasts to the birds. It is cardinal in its rank, as in its color. Nature here is full of blood and heat and luxuriance. What a triumph it appears in Nature to have produced and perfected such a plant, enough for a summer.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is a great change produced in one frosty night. What a sudden period put to the reign of summer!

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is good policy to be stirring about your affairs, for the reward of activity and energy is that if you do not accomplish the object you had professed to yourself, you do accomplish something else.

So, in my botanizing or natural history walks, it commonly turns out that, going for one thing, I get another thing. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I do not remember any page which will tell me how to spend this afternoon.  I do not so much wish to know how to economise time as how to spend it, by what means to grow rich, that the day may not have been in vain…

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas, in nature.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The sarsaparilla leaves, green or reddish, are spotted with yellow eyes

centered with reddish, or dull-reddish eyes with yellow iris.

They have a very pretty effect held over the forest floor, beautiful in their decay.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Some hours seem not to be occasion for anything, unless for great resolves to draw breath and repose in, so religiously do we postpone all action therein.

We do not straight go about to execute our thrilling purpose, but shut our doors behind us, and saunter with prepared mind, as if the half were already done.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is wise to write on many subjects, to try many themes, that so you may find the right and inspiring one. Be greedy of occasions to express your thought. Improve the opportunity to draw analogies. There are innumerable avenues to a perception of the truth. Improve the suggestion of each object however humble, however slight and transient the provocation. What else is there to be improved ? Who knows what opportunities he may neglect? It is not in vain that the mind turns aside this way or that: follow its leading; apply it whither it inclines to go. Probe the universe in a myriad points. Be avaricious of these impulses. You must try a thousand themes before you find the right one, as nature makes a thousand acorns to get one oak.

He is a wise man and experienced who has taken many views; to whom stones and plants and animals and a myriad objects have each suggested something, contributed something.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As for walking, the inhabitants of large English towns are confined almost exclusively to their parks and to the highways. The few footpaths in their vicinities “are gradually vanishing,” says Wilkinson, “under the encroachments of the proprietors.” He proposes that the people’s right to them be asserted and defended and that they be kept in a passable state at the public expense. “This,”says he,”would be easily done by means of asphalt laid upon a good foundation” ! ! !  So much for walking, and the prospects of walking, in the neighborhood of English large towns. 

Think of a man — he may be a genius of some kind—being confined to a highway and a park for his world to range in!  I should die from mere nervousness at the thought of such confinement.  I should hesitate before I were born, if those terms could be made known to me before hand.  Fenced in forever by those green barriers of fields, where gentlemen are seated ! Can they be said to be inhabitants of this globe? Will they be content to inhabit heaven thus partially? 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Sometimes my thought rustles in midsummer as if ripe for the fall— 

I anticipate the russet hues and the dry scent of autumn, as the feverish man dreams of balm and sage.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Cohush berries appear now to be in their prime, and arum berries, and red choke-berries, which last further up in this swamp, with their peculiar glossy red and squarish form, are really very handsome. A few medeola berries ripe. The very dense clusters of the smilacina berries, finely purple-dotted on a pearly ground, are very interesting; also the smaller and similar clusters of the two-leaved convallaria. Many of the last and a few of the first are already turned red, clear semilucent red. They have a pleasant sweetish taste.