in Thoreau’s Journal:

Sometimes a day serves only to hold time together.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Would it not be worth the while to devote one day each year to collecting with pains the different kinds of asters––perhaps about this time––and another to the goldenrods?

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As for walking, the inhabitants of large English towns are confined almost exclusively to their parks and to the highways. The few footpaths in their vicinities “are gradually vanishing,” says Wilkinson, “under the encroachments of the proprietors.” He proposes that the people’s right to them be asserted and defended and that they be kept in a passable state at the public expense. “This,”says he,”would be easily done by means of asphalt laid upon a good foundation” ! ! !  So much for walking, and the prospects of walking, in the neighborhood of English large towns. 

Think of a man — he may be a genius of some kind—being confined to a highway and a park for his world to range in!  I should die from mere nervousness at the thought of such confinement. 

I should hesitate before I were born, if those terms could be made known to me before hand.  Fenced in forever by those green barriers of fields, where gentlemen are seated ! Can they be said to be inhabitants of this globe? Will they be content to inhabit heaven thus partially? 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Sometimes my thought rustles in midsummer as if ripe for the fall— 

I anticipate the russet hues and the dry scent of autumn, as the feverish man dreams of balm and sage.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Let us know and conform only to the fashions of eternity.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The reflections are perfect.

in Thoreau’s  Journal:

Both a conscious and an unconscious life are good. Neither is good exclusively, for both have the same source. The wisely conscious life springs out of an unconscious suggestion. I have found my account in travelling in having prepared beforehand a list of questions which I would get answered, not trusting to my interest at the moment, and can then travel with the most profit. 

Indeed, it is by obeying the suggestions of a higher light within you that you escape from yourself and, in the transit, as it were see with the unworn sides of your eye, travel totally new paths.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off; though they are concealed behind his house, every passer knows of them.

So, too, ever and anon I pass through a little region possessed by the fragrance of ripe apples.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Soaking rain last night, straight down. When the wind stirs after the rain, leaves that were prematurely ripe or withered begin to strew the ground on the leeward side. Especially the scarlet leaves of the cultivated cherry are seen to have fallen.

Their change, then, is not owing to drought, but commonly a portion of them ripens thus early, reminding us of October and November. When, as I go to the post-office this morning, I see these bright leaves strewing the moist ground on one side of the tree and blown several rods from it into a neighboring yard, I am reminded that I have crossed the summit ridge of the year and have begun to descend the other slope. The prospect is now toward winter. These are among the first-fruits of the leafy harvest. The sharp whistling note of a downy woodpecker, which sounds rare; perhaps not heard since spring.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Would it not be well to describe some of those rough—all day walks across lots….

—-Picking our way over quaking meadows & swamps —& occasionally slipping into the muddy batter mid-leg deep—-jumping or fording ditches & brooks—forcing our way through dense blueberry swamps—-where there is water beneath & bushes above—then brushing through extensive birch forests all covered with green lice—which cover our clothes & face—then under larger wood relieved, more open beneath—-steering for some more conspicuous trunk Now along a rocky hill side where the sweet fern grows for a mile—then over a recent cutting—finding our uncertain footing on the cracking tops & trimmings of trees left by the choppers— Now taking a step or 2 of smooth walking across a high way— Now through a dense pine wood descending—into a rank dry swamp where the cinnamon fern rises above your head—with isles of poison dog wood— Now up a scraggy hill—covered with shrub oak—stooping & winding ones way—for half a mile—tearing ones clothes in many places & putting out ones eyes—& find at last that it has no bare brow but another slope of the same character— Now through a corn field diagonally with the rows—now coming upon the hidden melon patch seeing the back-side of familiar hills & not knowing them. The nearest house to home which you do not know—seeming further off—than the farthest which you do know— In the spring defiled with the froth on various bushes, &c &c &c— Now reaching on higher land some open—pigeon place—a breathing place for us.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A man shall, perchance, rush by and trample down

plants as high as his head, and cannot be said to know

that they exist, though he may have cut and cured many

tons of them for his cattle. Yet, perchance, if he ever

favorably attend to them, he may be overcome by their

beauty.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

One of the most noticeable wild fruits at present is the Viburnum nudum berries, their variegated cymes amid the green leaves in the swamps or low grounds, some whitish, some greenish, some red, some pink, some rose-purple and very beautiful, —and so beautiful, however, off the bush, — some dark purple or blue, and some black whose bloom is rubbed off, a very rich sight. The silky cornel is the most common everywhere, bordering the river and swamps, its drooping cymes of amethystine (?) china or glass beads mingled with whitish.

The fruit of the Viburnum Lentago is now very handsome, with its sessile cymes of large elliptical berries, green on one side and red with a purple bloom on the other or exposed side, not yet purple, blushing on one cheek. Many pyrus leaves are now red in the swamps, and some Viburnum nudum.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The year is but a succession of days, and I see that I could assign some office to each day which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Everything is done in season, and there is no time to spare. The bird gets its brood hatched in season and is off.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

When I used to pick the berries for dinner on the East Quarter hills I did not eat one until I had done, for going a-berrying implies more things than eating the berries.

They at home got only the pudding; I got the forenoon out of doors and the appetite for the pudding.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

….It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the seasons by this [the blossoming of vervain] & similar clocks— So you get not the absolute time but the true time of the season. 

But I can measure the progress of the seasons only by observing a particular plant, for I notice that they are by no means equally advanced. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This day, too, has that autumnal character. I am struck by the clearness and stillness of the air, the brightness of the landscape, or, as it were, the reflection of light from the washed earth, the darkness and heaviness of the shade, as I look now up the river at the white maples and bushes, and the smoothness of the stream. If they are between you and the sun, the trees are more black than green. It must be owing to the clearness of the air since the rains, together with the multiplication of the leaves, whose effect has not been perceived during the mists of the dog-days.

But I cannot account for this peculiar smoothness of the dimpled stream – unless the air is stiller than before – nor for the peculiar brightness of the sun’s reflection from its surface. I stand on the south bank, opposite the black willows, looking up the full stream, which, with a smooth, almost oily and sheeny surface, comes welling and dimpling onward, peculiarly smooth and bright now at 4 P. M., while the numerous trees seen up the stream – white maples, oaks, etc. – and the bushes look absolutely black in the clear, bright light.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As toward the evening of the day the lakes and streams are smooth, so in the fall, the evening of the year, the waters are smoothed more perfectly than at any other season. The day is an epitome of the year.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I sailed on the North River last night with my flute, and my music was a tinkling stream which meandered with the river, and fell from note to note as a brook from rock to rock. I did not hear the strains after they had issued from the flute, but before they were breathed into it, for the original strain precedes the sound by as much as the echo follows after, and the rest is the perquisite of the rocks and trees and beasts.

Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts, the very undertow of our life’s stream.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Ah, the very brooks seem fuller of reflections than they were! Ah, such provoking sibylline sentences they are! The shallowest is all at once unfathomable. How can that depth be fathomed where a man may see himself reflected? The rill I stopped to drink at I drink in more than I expected. I satisfy and still provoke the thirst of thirsts.