in Thoreau’s Journal:

—To epigaea via Clamshell Hill.

There is no such thing as pure objective observation.  Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective. The sum of what the writer of whatever class has to report is simply some human experience, whether he be poet or philosopher or man of science. The man of most science is the man most alive, whose life is the greatest event. Senses that take cognizance of outward things merely are of no avail. It matters not where or how far you travel, —the farther commonly the worse, —but how much alive you are. If it is possible to conceive of an event outside to humanity, it is not of the slightest significance, though it were the explosion of a planet. Every important worker will report what life there is in him. It makes no odds into what seeming deserts the poet is born. Though all his neighbors pronounce it a Sahara, it will be a paradise to him; for the desert which we see is the result of the barrenness of our experience. No mere willful activity whatever, whether in writing verses or collecting statistics, will produce true poetry or science. If you are really a sick man, it is indeed to be regretted, for you cannot accomplish so much as if you were well. All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, ––to sing; and if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love. This alone is to be alive to the extremities. It is a pity that this divine creature should ever suffer from cold feet; a still greater pity that the coldness so often reaches to his heart. I look over the report of the doings of a scientific association and am surprised that there is so little life to be reported; I am put off with a parcel of dry technical terms. Anything living is easily and naturally expressed in popular language. I cannot help suspecting that the life of these learned professors has been almost as inhuman and wooden as a rain-gauge or self-registering magnetic machine. They communicate no fact which rises to the temperature of blood-heat. It doesn’t all amount to one rhyme.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Every part of the world is beautiful today— — The bright shimmering water—fresh light-green grass springing up on the hills—tender firm moss-like before it waves.

As I can throw my voice into my head & sing very loud & clear there, so I can throw my thought into a higher chamber, & think louder & clearer above the earth than men will understand.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Leaf-stem, bud, and flower are all very handsome in their place & season.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How cheering & glorious any landscape viewed from an eminence! 

For every one has its horizon & sky. It is so easy to take wide views.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

No thought but is connected as strictly as a flower, with the earth. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The sugar maple keys (or buds?) hang down one inch, quite.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Columbine just out; one anther sheds.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being. 

What bond is it relates us to any animal we keep in the house but the bond of affection?  In a degree we grow to love each other.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This bright reflecting water surface is seen plainly at a higher level than the distant pond— It has a singular but peasant effect on the beholder to see considerable sheets of water standing at different levels— Pleasant to see lakes like platters full of water….. 

This may, perhaps, be nearly the order of the world’s creation. Thus we have in the spring of the year the spring of the world represented.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is astonishing how soon and unexpectedly flowers appear, when the fields are scarcely tinged with green.

Yesterday, for instance, you observed only the radical leaves of some plants; to-day you pluck a flower.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is a great art to saunter.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

No pages in my Journal are so suggestive as those which contain a rude sketch.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The epigaea on the upper edge of the bank shows a good deal of the pink,

and may open in two or three days if it is pleasant. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The first April showers are even fuller of promise and a certain moist serenity than the sunny days. How thickly the green blades are starting up amid the russet!

The tinge of green is gradually increasing in the face of the russet earth.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

When the outline & texture of white pine is thus seen against the water or the sky it is an affecting sight.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How we prize any redness on the ground….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

To my neighbors who have risen in mist and rain I tell of a clear sunrise and the singing of birds as some traditionary mythus. I look back to those fresh but now remote hours as to the old dawn of time, when a solid and blooming health reigned and every deed was simple and heroic.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The infinite bustle of Nature of a summer’s noon, or her infinite silence of a summer’s night, gives utterance to no dogma. They do not say to us even with a seer’s assurance, that this or that law is immutable and so ever and only can the universe exist.

But they are the indifferent occasion for all things and the annulment of all laws.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

For the first time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle— I see distinctly the spring arc thus far. It is drawn with a firm line…

Why should just these sights & sounds accompany our life? Why should I hear the chattering of blackbirds—why smell the skunk each year? I would fain explore the mysterious relation between myself & these things. I would at least know what these things unavoidably are—make a chart of our life & when—know why just this circle of creatures completes the world. Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature—make a day to bring forth something new?

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The scent of the earliest spring flowers!  I smelt the willow catkins today.  Tender––& innocent––after this rude winter––yet slightly sickening–– –– Yet full of vernal promise.  The odor–– How unlike any thing that winter affords––or nature has afforded this 6 months! A mild sweet vernal scent–– Not highly spiced & intoxicating as some erelong––but attractive to bees––

That early yellow smell. The odor of spring––of life developing amid buds––of the earth’s epithalamium–– The first flowers are not the highest scented––as catkins––as the first birds are not the finest singers––as the black-birds & song sparrows &c. The beginnings of the year are humble. But though this fragrance is not rich––it contains & prophecies all others in it.