in Thoreau’s Journal:

The sad memory of departed friends is soon incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as their monuments are overgrown with moss.  Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi  the most unsightly objects become radiant with beauty. There seem to be two sides of this world presented to us at different times, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death….

If we see Nature as pausing, immediately all modifies and decays; but seen as progressing she is beautiful. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

1853:  Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.  

1854:  This great expanse of deep blue water––deeper than the sky––why does it not blue my soul as of yore. It is hard to soften me now…The time was when this great blue scene would have tinged my spirit more.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfaction and inspirations from the commonest events, every-day phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive in my daily walk, the conversations of my neighbors, may inspire me and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

In the spaces of still, open water I see the reflection of the hills and woods, which for so long I have not seen, and it gives expression to the face of nature. The face of nature is lit up by these reflections in still water in the spring. Sometimes you see only the top of distant hill reflected far within the meadow, where a dull, gray field of ice intervenes between the water and the shore.

1840 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The wind shifts from northeast and east, to north-west and south, and every icicle which has tinkled on the meadow grass so long—trickles down its stem and seeks its water level unerringly with a million comrades. In the ponds the ice cracks with a busy and inspiriting din—and down the larger streams is whirled, grating hoarsely and crashing its way along—which was so lately a firm field for the woodman’s team and the fox—sometimes with the tracks of the skaters still fresh upon it—and the holes cut for pickerel. Town committees inspect the bridges and causeways—as if by mere eye-force to intercede with the ice, and save the treasury.

In the brooks the slight grating sound of small cakes of ice floating with various speed, is full of content and promise, and where the water gurgles under a natural bridge you may hear these hasty rafts hold conversation in an under tone.

Every rill is a channel for the juices of the meadow. Last years grasses and flower stalks have been steeped in rain and snow, and now the brooks flow with meadow tea—thoroughwort mint, flagroot and pennyroyal, all at one draught.

In the ponds the sun makes encroachments around the edges first, as ice melts in a kettle on the fire—darting his rays through this crevice; and preparing the deep water to act simultaneously on the under side.

1859 in Thoreau’s Journal:

To us snow and cold seem a mere delaying of the spring. How far we are from understanding the value of these things in the economy of Nature.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Going through the high field beyond the lone grave-yard, I see the track of a boy’s sled before me, and his footsteps shining like silver between me and the moon; and now I come to where they have coasted in a hollow in the upland bean field, and there are countless tracks of sleds. I forget that the sun shone on them in their sport, as if I had reached the region of perpetual twilight, and their sports appear more significant and symbolical now, more earnest. For what a man does abroad by night requires and implies more deliberate energy than what he is encouraged to do in the sunshine.  He is more spiritual, less animal and vegetable, in the former case….This stillness is more impressive than any sound. The moon, the stars, the trees, the snow, the sand when bare, a monumental stillness whose void must be supplied by thought. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The water here and there on the meadow begins to appear smooth….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

To the Beeches.  A misty afternoon, but warm, threatening rain. Standing on Walden, whose eastern shore is laid waste, men walking on the hillside a quarter of a mile off are singularly interesting objects, seen through the mist, which has the effect of a mirage. The persons of the walkers are black on the snowy ground, and the limited horizon makes them the more important in the scene. This kind of weather is very favorable to our landscape.

I must not forget the lichen-painted boles of the beeches.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is discouraging to talk with men who will recognize no principles….

Up river on ice to Fairhaven Pond…The air is fresher & the sky clearer in the morning –– We have this morning the clear cold continent sky of January. The river is frozen solidly & I do not have to look out for openings. Now I can take that walk along the river highway & the meadow––which leads me under––the boughs of the maples & the swamp white oaks &c which in summer overhang the water––there I can now stand at my ease & study their phenomena––amid the sweet gale & button bushes projecting above the snow & ice.  I see the shore from the water side––  A liberal walk––so level & wide & smooth without under brush. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The slight robin snow of yesterday is already mostly dissipated, but where a heap still lingers the sun on the warm face of this cliff leads down a puny, tickling rill, moistening the gutters on the steep face of the rocks…You can trace the course of this trickling stream over the rock through such a patch of lichens by the olive green of the lichens alone. Here and there the same moisture refreshes and brightens up the scarlet crown of some little cockscomb lichen,

and when the rill reaches the perpendicular face of the cliff, its constant drip at night builds great organ pipes, of a ringed structure, which run together buttressing the rock.

Skating yesterday and to-day.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We talk about spring as at hand before the end of February, and yet it will be two good months, one sixth part of the whole year, before we can go a-Maying. There may be a whole month of solid and uninterrupted winter yet, plenty of ice and good sleighing. We may not even see the bare ground, and hardly any water; and yet we sit down and warm our spirits annual with the distant prospect of spring. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

No man writes on lichens using the terms of the science intelligibly—without having something to say—

but everyone thinks himself competent to write on the relation of the soul to the body as if that were a phaenogamous subject.  

in Thoreau’s Journal:

To-day it snows again, covering the ground. To get the value of the storm, we must be out a long time and travel far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our skin, and we be, as it were, turned inside out to it, and there be no part in us but is wet or weather-beaten, so that we become storm men instead of fair-weather men.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Walking in the woods, it may be some afternoon, the shadow of the wings of a thought flits across the landscape of my mind, and I am reminded how little eventful are our lives. What have been all these wars and rumors of wars, and modern discoveries and improvements, so called? A mere irritation in the skin.

But this shadow which is so soon past, and whose substance is not detected, suggests that there are events of importance whose interval is to us a true historic period. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is surprising how much room there is in nature, —if man will follow his proper path…

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle today.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A fine spring morning. The ground is almost completely bare again. There has been a frost in the night. Now at half past eight it is melted and wets my feet like a dew. The water on the meadow this still bright morning is smooth as in April. I am surprised to hear the strain of a song-sparrow from the river side, and as I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one’s note from deep in the softened air…Their short rich warble curls through the air…It seems to be one of those early springs of which we have heard, but which we have never experienced.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A fact must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. Otherwise it is like giving a man a stone when he asks for bread. Ultimately the moral is all in all, and we do not mind it if inferior truth is sacrificed to superior, as when the annalist fables, and makes animals speak and act like men. It must be warm, moist, incarnated, have been breathed on at least. A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A mild misty day….the ringlets & ends of usnea are so expanded & puffed out with light & life….they take the place of leaves in the winter.— The clusters dripping with moisture…