Thermometer at 7 A.M. 6°, yet, the fire going out, Sophia’s plants are frozen again. Dr. Bartlett’s was - 4°.
When it was proposed to me to go abroad, rub off some rust, and better my condition in a worldly sense, I fear lest my life will lose some of its homeliness.
If these fields and streams and woods, the phenomena of nature here, and the simple occupations of the inhabitants should cease to interest and inspire me, no culture or wealth would atone for the loss.
I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, every-day phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me.
Only that travelling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better. That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
I hear that Goodwin found one of his traps frozen in this morning, where it has not frozen before this year.
P. M.—3.30, thermometer 24°.
Cut a hole in the ice in the middle of Walden. It is just 24 1/4 inches thick, 1 1/2+ being snow ice, 12 3/4 water ice; and there is between 3 and 4 inches of crusted snow above this. The water rises to within 2 1/2 inches of the top of the ice, i. e. between a ninth and tenth of the whole thickness. The clear ice has therefore gained 2 1/2 inches beneath since the 16th of February. It has gone on freezing under 2 3/4 inches of ice. Yet people very commonly say that it will not continue to freeze under half that thickness of snow and ice. It is a job to cut a hole now.
Snow and ice together make a curtain twenty-eight inches thick now drawn over the pond. Such is the prospect of the fishes!
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 11, 1856
I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events . . . dream of no heaven but that which lies about me. See April 24, 1859 ("There is no other life but this, or the like of this. Nothing must be postponed.“); January 11, 1852 ("Let me not live as if time was short. Catch the pace of the seasons; have leisure to attend to every phenomenon of nature, and to entertain every thought that comes.")
Only that travelling is good which reveals to me the value of home. See August 19, 1851 ("As travellers go round the world and report natural objects and phenomena, so faithfully let another stay at home and report the phenomena of his own life."); January 11, 1852 ("The question is not where did the traveller go?. . . but who was the traveller? . . . the question is how do you live and conduct yourself at home?"); May 6, 1854 ("It matters not where or how far you travel, — the farther commonly the worse, — but how much alive you are."); November 20, 1857 ("A man is worth most to himself and to others, whether as an observer, or poet, or neighbor, or friend, where he is most himself, most contented and at home"); November 1, 1858 ("Take the shortest way round and stay at home. A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its calyx, like an acorn in its cup. Here, of course, is all that you love, all that you expect, all that you are.")
That travel is good
only which reveals to me
the value of home.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May I dream of no heaven but that which lies about me.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560311
***
I fear the dissipation that travelling, going into society, even the best, the enjoyment of intellectual luxuries, imply. If Paris is much in your mind, if it is more and more to you, Concord is less and less, and yet it would be a wretched bargain to accept the proudest Paris in exchange for my native village. At best, Paris could only be a school in which to learn to live here, a stepping stone to Concord, a school in which to fit for this university.
A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him?
The sight of a marsh hawk in Concord meadows is .worth more to me than the entry of the allies into Paris . In this sense I am not ambitious . I do not wish my native soil to become exhausted and run out through neglect . Only that travelling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better .
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
It is strange that men are in such haste to get fame as teachers rather than knowledge as learners.
It is strange that men are in such haste to get fame as teachers rather than knowledge as learners.
