in Thoreau’s Journal:

My Journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love to think of.

I have no more distinctness or pointedness in my yearnings than an expanding bud, which does indeed point to flower and fruit, to summer and autumn, but is aware of the warm sun and spring influence only. I feel ripe for something, yet do nothing, can’t discover what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with me. I have lain fallow long enough.