in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is surprising how much room there is in nature if a man will follow his proper path.

In these broad fields, in these extensive woods, on this stretching river, I never meet a walker.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

What a rich book might be made about buds, including perhaps, sprouts. The impregnable, vivacious willow catkins, but half asleep along the twigs, under the armor of their black scales, the birch and oak sprouts, the rank and lusty dogwood sprouts, the sound, red buds of the blueberry, the small pointed red buds, close to the twig, of the panicled andromeda, the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink, etc.

How healthy and vivacious must he be who would treat of these things.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Thus we go about, raised, generally speaking, more than a foot above the summer level. So much higher do we carry our heads in the winter.

What a great odds such a little difference makes! When the snow raises us one foot higher than we have been accustomed to walk, we are surprised at our elevation ! So we soar.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses of nature, I am reminded by the serene and retired spirit in which it requires to be contemplated—of the inexpressible privacy of a life.  How silent and unambitious it is! The beauty there is in mosses will have to be considered from the holist, quietest nook.

—The gods delight in stillness…My truest, serenest moments are too still for emotion. They have woolen feet. In all our lives, we live under the hill, and if we are not gone, we live there still.

in Thoreau’sJournal:

Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-of-pearl tints and rainbow flecks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sunset.

Yesterday I saw a very permanent specimen, like a long knife handle of mother-of-pearl, very pale with and interior blue, and rosaceous tinges. I think the summer sky never exhibits this so finely.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The sky has gradually become overcast & now it is just beginning to snow—looking against a dark roof—I detect a single flake from time to time—but when I look at the dark side of the woods 2 miles off in the horizon there already is seen a slight thickness or mistiness in the air—In this way, perhaps, may it first be detected…..

Pines & oaks seen at a distance—say 2 miles off—are considerably blended & make one harmonious impression—the former if you attend—are seen to be of a blue or misty black—and the latter form commonly a reddish brown ground, out of which the former rise—These colors are no longer in strong contrast with each other—

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The world is not only new to the eye but is still as at creation; every blade and leaf is hushed; not a bird or insect is heard; only perchance, a faint sleigh-bell in the distance.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Another bright winter day.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The temperature of the air and the clearness or serenity of the sky are indispensable to a knowledge of a day, so entirely do we sympathize with the moods of nature.

It is important to know of a day that is past whether it was warm or cold, clear or cloudy, calm or windy, etc.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair days.…As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind….

The World runs to see the panorama, while there is panorama in the sky which few go out to see.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Why so much (five and one half inches) more now in the woods than on the 12th, as compared with open fields ? Was the driving snow caught in a small wood, or did it settle less in the rain there, or since the snow on account of bushes ?

With this snow the fences are scarcely an obstruction to the traveller; he easily steps over them. Often they are buried. I suspect it is two and a half feet deep in Andromeda Swamps now. The snow is much deeper in yards, roads, and all small inclosures than in broad fields.

in Thoreau’s Journal:  

There is a still life in America that is little observed or dreamed of….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

White walls of snow rest on the boughs of trees, in height two or three times their thickness. These white irregular arms give the forest a wintry and picturesque look at a distance. The evergreens, especially the pitch pine, often bear large irregular white burdens, agreeably diversified and loopholed by the interstices of the plumes. But it is only when fresh that this snow on the trees is beautiful. Already, before the storm is over, the surface of the snow in the high woods is full of indentations and hollows where some of this burden has fallen.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We should offer up our perfect thoughts to the gods daily—our writing should be hymns and psalms. Who keeps a journal is purveyor for the Gods.

There are two sides to every sentence; the one is contiguous to me, but the other faces the gods, and no man ever fronted it. When I utter a thought I launch a vessel which never sails in my haven more, but goes sheer off into the deep. Consequently it demands a godlike insight—a fronting view, to read what was greatly written.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is a very beautiful and spotless snow now, it having just ceased falling.  You are struck by its peculiar tractlessness, as if it were a thick white blanket just spread.

As it were, each snow-flake lies as it first fell, or there is a regular gradation from the denser bottom up to the surface which is perfectly light, and as it were fringed with the last flakes that fell.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The question is not where did the traveller go? what places did he see? — it would be difficult to choose between places — but who was the traveller? how did he travel? how genuine an experience did he get? For travelling is, in the main, like as if you stayed at home, and then the question is how do you live and conduct yourself at home? What I mean is that it might be hard to decide whether I would travel to Lake Superior, or Labrador, or Florida. Perhaps none would be worth the while, if I went by the usual mode.

But if I travel in a simple, primitive, original manner, standing in a truer relation to men and nature, travel away from the old and commonplace, get some honest experience of life, if only out of my feet and homesickness, then it becomes less important whither I go or how far. I so see the world from a new and more commanding point of view.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I would fain keep a journal which should contain those thoughts and impressions which I am most liable to forget that I have had;

which would have in one sense the greatest remoteness, in another, the greatest nearness to me.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Snows again….The snow is very moist, with large flakes. Looking toward Trillium wood, the nearer flakes appear to move quite swiftly, often making the impression of a continuous white line. They are also seen to move directly, and nearly horizontally. But the more distant flakes appear to loiter in the air, as if uncertain how they will approach the earth, or even to cross the course of the former, and are always seen as simple and distinct flakes.

I think that this difference is simply owing to the fact that the former pass quickly over the field of view, while the latter are much longer in it.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We love not so well the landscape represented as in broad noon, but in a morning or evening twilight, those seasons when the imagination is most active, the more hopeful or pensive seasons of the day. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The moods of man should unfold and alternate as gradually and placidly as those of nature. The sun shines for aye!

The sudden revolutions of these times and this generation have acquired a very exaggerated importance. They do not interest me much, for they are not in harmony with the longer periods of nature.