in Thoreau’s journal:

A journal is a record of experiences and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said….The charm of the journal must consist in a certain greenness, though freshness, and not in maturity. Here I cannot afford to be remembering what I said or did…

….I do not the least care where I get my ideas, or what suggests them…

in Thoreau’s Journal:

To insure health, a man’s relation to nature must come very near to a personal one….I do not see that I can live tolerably without affection for nature. If I feel no softening toward the rocks, what do they signify…

in Thoreau’s Journal

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

in Thoreau’s Journal:

…..I am disturbed by the sound of my steps on the frozen ground. I wish to hear the silence of the night. I cannot walk with my ears covered, for the silence is something positive and to be heard….

When I enter the woods, I am fed by the variety, the forms of the trees above against the blue, with the stars seen through the pines, like the lamps hung on them in an illumination, the somewhat indistinct and misty fineness of the pine tops, the finely divided spray of the oaks, etc., and the shadow of all these on the snow.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

In certain places, standing on their snowiest side, the woods were incredibly fair, white as alabaster. Indeed, the young pines reminded you of the purest statuary, and the stately, full-grown ones, towering around, affected you as if you stood in a Titanic sculptor’s studio, so purely and delicately white, transmitting the light, their dark trunks all concealed; and in many places where the snow lay on withered oak leaves between you and the light, various delicate, fawn-colored tints blending with the white enhanced their beauty….

I doubt if I can convey an idea of the appearance of the woods yesterday. As you stood in their midst, and looked round on their boughs and twigs laden with snow, it seemed as if there could be none left to reach the ground. These countless zigzag white arms crossing each other at every possible angle completely closed up the view like a light drift within three or four rods on every side, the wintriest prospect imaginable. That snow which sifted down into the wood was much drier and lighter than elsewhere.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I anticipate a more thorough sympathy with nature when my thigh bones shall strew the ground like the boughs which the wind has scattered. These troublesome humours will flower into early anemones, and perhaps in the very lachrymal sinus, nourished by its juices, some young pine or oak will strike root.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/the-living-dead.html?

January 18, 1841

We must expect no income beside our outgoes. We must succeed now, and we shall not fail hereafter. So soon as we begin to count the cost, the cost begins.

January 18, 1856

Many times I thought that if the particular tree, commonly an elm, under which I was walking or riding were the only one like it in the county, it would be worth a journey across the continent to see it. Indeed, I have no doubt that such journeys would be undertaken on hearing a true account of it. But instead of being confined to a single tree, this wonder was as cheap and common as the air itself. 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:

In proportion as I have celestial thoughts is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky before sunset these winter days.

That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer. What is your thought like? That is the hue, that the purity and transparency and distance from earthly taint of my inmost mind; for whatever we see without is a symbol of something within, and that which is farthest off is the symbol of what is deepest within. The lover of contemplation, accordingly, will gaze much into the sky. Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair days.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

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

in Thoreau’s Journal:

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

in Thoreau’s Journal:

….It is a mild day, and I notice, what I have not observed for some time, that blueness of the air only to be perceived in a mild day. I see it between me and the woods half a mile distant. The softening of the air amounts to this. The mountains are quite invisible. You come forth to see this great blue presence lurking about the woods and the horizon.

in Thoreau’s Journal:
Here I am on the Cliffs at half-past three or four o’clock. The snow more than a foot deep over all the land.

Few, if any, leave the beaten paths.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

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

This was a star snow, dry, but the stars of considerable size. It lies up light as down. When I look closely, it seems to be chiefly composed of crystals in which the six rays or leaflets are more or less perfect, with a cottony powder intermixed. It is not yet in the least melted by the sun. The sun is out very bright and pretty warm and going from it, I see a myriad sparkling points scattered over the surface of the snow….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I cannot afford to be telling my experience, especially to those who perhaps will take no interest in it. I wish to be getting experience…

I demand of my companion some evidence that he has traveled rather than to the sources of the Nile, that he has been OUT OF TOWN, OUT OF THE HOUSE, not that he can tell a good story, but that he can keep a good silence. Has he attended to a silence more significant than any story? Did he ever get out of the road which all men and fools travel? You call yourself a great traveler, perhaps, but can you get beyond the influence of a certain class of ideas?

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The weather has considerable moderated, -2º at breakfast time…

Recall, realize now, if you can the hum of the mosquito.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

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

in Thoreau’s Journal:

When, as now, in January a south wind melts the snow, and the bare ground appears covered with sere grass and occasionally wilted green leaves, which seem in doubt whether to let go their greenness quite or absorb new juices against the coming year,

in such a season a perfume seems to exhale from the earth itself…

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by church-going and prayer. I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.

I thus dispose of the superfluous, and see things are they are, grand and beautiful. I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it. I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America, out of my head and be sane a part of every day.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

When I look up a fragment of a walnut shell this morning, I saw by its grain and composition, its form and color, etc., that is was made for happiness. The most brutish and inanimate objects that are made suggest an everlasting and thorough satisfaction. They are the homes of content. Wood, earth, mould, etc., exist for joy.

a beech nut husk on snow, January 2, 2016

in Thoreau’s Journal:

To-day the trees are white with snow,—I mean their stems and branches,—and have the true wintery look on the storm side.

Not till this has winter come to the forest. It looks like the small frost-work in the path and on the windows now, especially the oak woods at a distance, and you see better the form which the branches take. That is a picture of winter…