in Thoreau’s Journal:

As I go through the woods I see the the ferns have turned brown & give the woods an autumnal look––

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It requires a different intention of the eye in the same locality to see different plants…. I find that when I am looking for the former, I do not see the latter in their midst. How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge ! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects! A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the pursuit of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks. He as it were tramples down oaks unwittingly in his walk.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

There is the hobble-bush with its berries and large roundish leaves, now beginning to turn a deep dull crimson red.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

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:

China-like berries of cornel along the river now abundant, some cymes wholly white; also the panicled there and in swamps, though its little red (?) fingers stems are oftenest bare, but are pretty enough, perhaps, to take the place of the berries.

The black choke-berries, as also choke-cherries, are stale.  The two-leaved Solomon’s-seal has just begun to redden; so the largest one. The creeping juniper berries are now a hoary green but full-grown. The scarlet thorn is in many places quite edible and now a deep scarlet. Polygonum and medulla now. Green-briar only begins to turn. Viburnum nudum rather stale. Clintonia probably about gone. Carrion-flower in prime. Maple viburnum fully ripe, like the dentatum.  Aralia hispida getting old. Feverwort now. Rose hips generally beginning; and two primroses beginning. Elder in prime and cranberry. Smooth sumach stale.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A book should be so true as to be intimate and familiar to all men, as the sun to their faces,

—such a word as is occasionally uttered to a companion in the woods in summer, and both are silent.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The Soapwort gentian out abundantly in Flints-Bridge Lane—ap. for a week—a surprisingly deep faintly purplish blue….it has the flowering of the sky. 

The sky has descended & kissed the earth….Why come these blue flowers thus late in the year.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The goldenrods and asters impress me not like individuals but great families covering a thousand hills and having a season to themselves.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I see white lilies wide open at 2: 30 P. M. They are half open even at 5 P. M. in many places this moist cloudy day and thus late in their season.