The Blog of Henry David Thoreau

how we are to be used...Thoreau's Journal: 28-Jan-1841

2012-01-28T01:18:00.000Z

It would be worth while, once for all, fairly and cleanly to tell how we are to be used, as vendors of Lucifer matches send directions in the envelope, both how light may be readily procured and no accident happen to the user.

that subdued and knocking mood...Thoreau's Journal: 27-Jan-1860

2012-01-27T01:15:00.000Z

As I go along the edge of Hubbard’s Wood, on the ice, it is very warm in the sun—and calm there. There are certain spots I could name, by hill and wood sides, which are always thus sunny and warm in fair weather, and have been, for aught I know, since the world was made. What a distinction they enjoy! How many memorable localities in a river walk! Here is the warm wood-side; next, the good

how the other half lives...Thoreau's Journal: 26-Jan-1856

2012-01-26T01:14:00.000Z

Walked as far as the Flint’s Bridge with Abel Hunt, where I took to the river. I told him I had come to walk on the river as the best place, for the snow had drifted somewhat in the road, while it was converted into ice almost entirely on the river. “But,” asked he, “are you not afraid that you will get in?” “Oh, no, it will bear a load of wood from one end to the other.” “But then there may be

love the crust of the earth...Thoreau's Journal: 25-Jan-1858

2012-01-25T01:12:00.000Z

You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sandheap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain.

free-soilers in their own broad sense...Thoreau's Journal: 24-Jan-1856

2012-01-24T01:07:00.000Z

I have seen many a collection of stately elms which better deserved to be represented at the General Court than the manikins beneath,—than the barroom and victualling cellar and groceries they overshadowed. When I see their magnificent domes, miles away in the horizon, over intervening valleys and forests, they suggest a village, a community, there. But, after all, it is a secondary consideration

coldest day...Thoreau's Journal: 23-Jan-1857

2012-01-23T01:40:00.000Z

The coldest day that I remember recording, clear and bright, but very high wind, blowing the snow. Ink froze.

why I left the woods?...Thoreau's Journal: 22-Jan-1852

2012-01-22T01:38:00.000Z

But why I changed? why I left the woods? I do not think that I can tell. I have often wished myself back. I do not know any better how I ever came to go there. Perhaps it is none of my business, even if it is yours. Perhaps I wanted a change. There was a little stagnation, it may be. About 2 o’clock in the afternoon the world’s axle creaked as if it needed greasing, as if the oxen labored with

new testaments of the skies...Thoreau's Journal: 21-Jan-1853

2012-01-21T01:35:00.000Z

I pine for a new world in the heavens as well as on earth, and though it is some consolation to hear of the wilderness of stars and systems invisible to the naked eye, yet the sky does not make that impression of variety and wildness that even the forest does, as it ought. It makes an impression, rather, of simplicity and unchangeableness, as of eternal laws; this being the same constellation

one universal reflector...Thoreau's Journal: 20-Jan-1857

2012-01-20T01:31:00.000Z

At R.W.E.’s this evening, at about 6 P.M. I was called out to see Eddy’s cave in the snow. It was a hole about two and a half feet wide and six feet long, into a drift, a little winding, and he had got a lamp at the inner extremity. I observed, as I approached in a course at right angles with the length of the cave, that the mouth of the cave was lit as if the light were close to it, so that I

the hue of heaven...Thoreau's Journal: 19-Jan-1855

2012-01-19T01:29:00.000Z

Yesterday it rained hard all day, washing off the little snow that was left down to the ice, the gutters being good-sized mill-brooks and the water over shoes in the middle of the road. In the night it turned to snow, which still falls, and now covers the wet ground three or four inches deep. It is a very damp snow or sleet, perhaps mixed with rain, which the strong northwest wind plasters to

such as no mortal dye...Thoreau's Journal: 18-Jan-1856

2012-01-18T01:27:00.000Z

This is a very mild, melting winter day, but clear and bright, yet I see the blue shadows on the snow at Walden. The snow lies very level there, about ten inches deep, and for the most part bears me as I go across with my hatchet. I think I never saw a more elysian blue than my shadow. I am turned into a tall blue Persian from my cap to my boots, such as no mortal dye can produce, with an

a disgrace...Thoreau's Journal: 17-Jan-1852

2012-01-17T01:17:00.000Z

One day two young woman—a Sunday—stopped at the door of my hut and asked for some water. I answered that I had no cold water but I would lend them a dipper. They never returned the dipper, and I had a right to suppose they came to steal. They were a disgrace to their sex and to humanity. Pariahs of the moral world. Evil spirits that thirsted not for water but threw the dipper into the lake. Such

rivals...Thoreau's Journal: 16-Jan-1853

2012-01-16T05:02:00.000Z

Trench says that “’rivals’ in the primary sense of the word, are those who dwell on the banks of the same stream” or “on opposite banks,” but as he says, in many words, since the use of water-rights is a fruitful source of contention between such neighbors, the word has acquired this secondary sense. My friends are my rivals on the Concord, in the primitive sense of the word. There is no strife

a most celestial blue...Thoreau's Journal: 15-Jan-1856

2012-01-15T00:01:00.000Z

A bright day, not cold. I can comfortably walk without gloves, yet my shadow is a most celestial blue. This only requires a clear bright day and snow-clad earth, not great cold. I cross the river on the crust with some hesitation. The snow appears considerably deeper than the 12th, maybe four or five inches deeper, and the river is indicated by a mere depression in it. In the street not only the

all the monkeys...Thoreau's Journal: 14-Jan-1854

2012-01-14T00:57:00.000Z

I just had a coat come home from the tailor’s. Ah me! Who am I that should wear this coat? It was fitted upon one of the devil’s angels about my size. Of what use that measuring of me if he did not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to hang it on. This is not the figure that I cut. This is the figure the tailor cuts. That presumptuous and impertinent

work our mines...Thoreau's Journal: 13-Jan-1852

2012-01-13T05:54:00.000Z

To please our friends and relatives we turn out our silver ore in cartloads, while we neglect to work our mines of gold known only to ourselves far up in the Sierras, where we pulled up a bush in our mountain walk, and saw the glittering treasure.

one great creature...Thoreau's Journal: 12-Jan-1855

2012-01-12T05:51:00.000Z

Perhaps what moves us most in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. How we leap by the side of the open brooks! What beauty in the running brooks! What life! What society! The cold is merely superficial; it is summer still at the core, far, far within. It is in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on our backs. I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far,

frozen on its beard...Thoreau's Journal: 11-Jan-1854

2012-01-11T05:49:00.000Z

To Cliffs and Walden. The north side of all stubble, weeds, and trees, and the whole forest is covered with a hoar frost a quarter to a half inch deep. It is easily shaken off. The air is still full of mist. No snow has fallen, but, as it were, the vapor has been caught by the trees like a cobweb. The trees are bright hoary forms, the ghosts of trees. In fact, the warm breath of the earth is

Holy-Lander...Thoreau's Journal: 10-Jan-1851

2012-01-10T00:45:00.000Z

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of taking walks daily, —not [to] exercise the legs or body merely, nor barely to recruit the spirits, but positively to exercise both body and spirit, and to succeed to the highest and worthiest ends by the abandonment of all specific ends,—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering. And this word “saunter,”

the lost outline...Thoreau's Journal: 09-Jan-1859

2012-01-09T14:01:00.000Z

At sundown to Walden. Standing on the middle of Walden I see with perfect distinctness the forms and outlines of the low hills which surround it, though they are wooded, because they are quite white, being covered with snow, while the woods are for the most part bare or very thin-leaved. I see thus the outline of the hills eight or ten rods back through the trees. This I can never do in the

a merely heathenish sense...Thoreau's Journal: 08-Jan-1852

2012-01-08T00:58:00.000Z

I notice that almost every track which I made yesterday in the snow—perhaps ten inches deep—has got a dead leaf in it, though none is to be seen on the snow around. Even as early as 3 o’clock these winter afternoons the axes in the woods sound like nightfall, like the sound of a twilight labor. Reading from my manuscripts to Miss Emerson this evening and using the word “god” in one instance, in

my coat-of-arms...Thoreau's Journal: 07-Jan-1857

2012-01-07T00:57:00.000Z

I should not be ashamed to have a shrub oak for my coat-of-arms.

made for happiness...Thoreau's Journal: 06-Jan-1857

2012-01-06T00:55:00.000Z

A man asked me the other night whether such and such persons were not as happy as anybody, being conscious, as I perceived, of such unhappiness himself and not aspiring to much more than an animal content. “Why!” said I, speaking to his condition, “the stones are happy. Concord River is happy, and I am happy too. When I took up a fragment of a walnut-shell this morning, I saw by its very grain

past summers...Thoreau's Journal: 05-Jan-1858

2012-01-05T00:53:00.000Z

Mr. Hosmer is loading hay in his barn. It is meadow-hay, and I am interested in it chiefly as a botanist. If meadow-hay is of less worth in the market, it is more interesting to the poet. In this there is a large proportion of Osmunda regalis. But I fear that in the long run it is not so interesting to the cattle to contemplate and chew this as English hay and clover. How completely a load of hay

detect their law...Thoreau's Journal: 04-Jan-1852

2012-01-04T00:50:00.000Z

To Fair Haven on the ice partially covered with snow. The cracks in the ice show a white cleavage. What is their law? Somewhat like foliage, but too rectangular, like the characters of some Oriental language. I feel as if I could get grammar and dictionary and go into it. They are of the form which a thin flake of ice takes in melting, somewhat rectangular with an irregular edge. The pond is