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:

I did well to walk in the forenoon, the fresh and inspiring half of this bright day, for now, at mid-aftemoon, its brightness is dulled, and a fine stratus is spread over the sky.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As it is important to consider nature from the point of view of science—remembering the nomenclature and systems of men—& so if possible go a step further in that direction—so it is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume that they know—& take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature—letting her make what impression she will on you—as the first men & all children & natural men do.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Health makes the poet—or sympathy with nature—a good appetite for his food which is constantly renewing him—whetting his senses. Pay for your victuals then with poetry—give back life for life.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

In composition I miss the hue of the mind.

As if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning and evening—without their colors—or the heavens without their azure.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you, know that the morning and spring of your life are past.  Thus you may feel your pulse.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As we grow older, is it not ominous that we have more to write about evening, less about morning? We must associate more with the early hours.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We have lived, not in proportion to the number of years that we have spent on the earth, but in proportion as we have enjoyed.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The whole of the day should not be daytime, nor of the night night-time, but some portion be rescued from time to oversee time in. All our hours must not be current; all our time must not lapse. There must be one hour at least which the day did not bring forth, — of ancient parentage and long-established nobility, ––which will be a serene and lofty platform overlooking the rest. We should make our notch every day on our characters, as Robinson Crusoe on his stick. We must be at the helm at least once a day; we must feel the tiller-rope in our hands, and know that if we sail, we steer.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow to get the sense of purity, novelty, and unexploredness.  The snow has lodged more or less in perpendicular lines on the northerly sides of trees, so that I am able to tell the points of compass as well as by the sun.  I guide myself accordingly.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We have had but one & no more this winter (and that I think was the first) of those gentle moist snows which lodge perfectly on the trees—and make perhaps the most beautiful sight of any.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The sky appears broader now than it did. The day has opened its eyelids wider.

The lengthening of the days, commenced a good while ago, is a kind of forerunner of the spring.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

[This post is a fytte or section of Thoreau’s Journal which is a poem.]

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The mice tracks are very amusing. It is surprising how numerous they are—& yet I rarely see one—

….Any tussocky ground is scored with them—  ….You see deep & distinct channels in the snow in some places as if a whole colony had long traveled to & fro in them—a high-way—a well-known trail—but suddenly they will come to an end—& yet they have not dived beneath the snow…

in Thoreau’s Journal:

2 pm To Walden 

A snow-storm which began in the night –& is now 3 or 4 inches deep– The ground which was more than half bare before–is thus suddenly concealed–& the snow lodges on the trees & fences & sides of houses–& we have a perfect wintry scene again– We hear that it stormed at Philadelphia yesterday morning. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Why should we not still continue to live with the intensity & rapidity of infants? Is not the world––are not the heavens––as unfathomed as ever? Have we exhausted any joy––any sentiment?

in Thoreau’s Journal:

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Winter comes to make walking possible where there was no walking in the summer.  Not till winter can we take possession of the whole of our territory…The wonderful stillness of a winter day! The sources of sound are, as it were, frozen up…A transient acquaintance with any phenomenon is not sufficient to make it completely the subject of your muse. You must be so conversant with it as to remember it, and be reminded of it long afterward, while it lies remotely fair and elysian in the horizon, approachable only by the imagination.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

[I was drawn to this passage by the excerpt immediately following.  It comes near the end of Thoreau’s entry for February 12, 1860.  Then thought to give the full entry (7 printed pages) so readers could see how Thoreau came to the part I’ve excerpted. The 7 pages also contain some of Thoreau’s drawings.]

The winter is coming when I shall walk the sky. The ice is a solid sky on which we walk. It is the inverted year. There is an annual light in the darkness of the winter night. The shadows are blue, as the sky is forever blue. In winter we are purified and translated. The earth does not absorb our thoughts. It becomes a Valhalla.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The atmosphere is very blue, tingeing the distant pine woods.