in Thoreau’s Journal:

…I looked back from the top of hill into this deep dell, where the white pines stood thick, rising one above another, reflecting the sunlight, so soft and warm by contrast with the snow, as never in summer, for the idea of warmth prevailed over the cold which the snow suggested, though I saw through and between them to a distant snow-clad hill…I was on the verge of seeing something, but I did not. If I had been alone, and had had more leisure, I might have seen something to report.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Between winter and summer there is, to my mind, an immeasurable interval.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The increased length of the days is very observable of late. What is a winter unless you have risen and gone abroad frequently before sunrise and by starlight.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

No second snow-storm in the winter can be so fair and interesting as the first.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Every leaf and twig was this morning covered with a sparkling ice armor.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

1856

Here, where you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walking than elsewhere in the winter.

1855

In certain places, standing on their snowiest side, the woods were incredibly fair, white as alabaster….I doubt if I can convey an idea of the appearance of the woods yesterday.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

When we are amiable, then is love in the gale, and in sun and shade, and day and night; and to sigh under the cold, cold moon for a love unrequited is to put a slight upon nature; the natural remedy would be to fall in love with the moon and the night, and find our love requited.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Every man’s wood-lot was a miracle and surprise to him, and for those who could not go far there were the trees in the street….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair days.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

There is a good deal of ice on the north sides of woods and in and about the sheltered swamps.

As we go southwestward through the cassandra hollows toward the declining sun, they look successively both by their form and color, like burnished silvery shields in the midst of which we walked, looking toward the sun.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Cold as the weather is and has been, almost all the brook is open in the meadow there, an artery of black water in the midst of the snow, and there are many sink-holes, where the water is exposed at the bottom of dimple in the snow. Indeed, in some places these little black spots are distributed very thickly, the snow in swells covering the intervening tussocks.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This forenoon I walk up the Assabet to see it. The hemlocks are perhaps a richer sight than any tree. –– such Christmas trees, thus, sugared, as were never seen. On one side you see more or less greenness,

but when you stand due north they are unexpectedly white and rich, so beautifully still, and then you look under them you see some great rock, or rocks, all hoary with the same, and a finer frost on the very fine dead hemlock twigs there and on hanging roots and twigs, quite like the cobwebs in a grist-mill covered with meal, –– and it implies a stillness like that; or it is like the lightest down glued on.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The surface of the snow, now that the sun has shone on it so long, is not so light and downy, almost impalpable, as it was yesterday, but is somewhat flattened down and looks even as if had had a skim-coat of whitewash. I can see sparkles on it, but they are finer than at first and therefore less dazzling.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

To live in relations of truth and sincerity with men is to dwell in a frontier country.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I was describing, the other day, my success in solitary and distant woodland walking outside the town.

I do not go there to get my dinner, but to get the sustenance which dinners only preserve me to enjoy, without which dinners are a vain repetition. But how little men can help me in this, only by having a kindred experience.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Such is the piercing wind, no man loiters between his house and barn.

The road track is soon obliterated, and the path which leads round to the back of the house, dug this morning, is filled again….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Snows again…The snow is very moist, with large flakes.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I wish to forget a considerable part of every day, all mean, narrow, trivial men….and therefore i come out to these solitudes where the problem of existence is simplified. I get a mile or two from the town, into the stillness and solitude of nature, with rocks, trees, weeds, snow about me.

I enter some glade in the woods, perchance, where a few weeds and dry leaves alone lift themselves above the surface of the snow, and it is as if I had come to an open window. I see out and around myself. Our sky-lights are thus far away from the ordinary resorts of men. I am not satisfied with ordinary windows. I must have a true sky-light….