To effect the quality of the day.

(The art of spending a day)

I went to the woods because

I wished to live deliberately

to front only the essential facts of life, and

 see if I could not learn what it had to teach, 

and not, when I came to die,

discover that I had not lived.

Walden

One does not soon learn the trade of life. That one may work out a true life requires more art and delicate skill than any other work.   December 29, 1841.

I find it to be the height of wisdom not to endeavor to oversee myself . . . but to see over and above myself, entertain sublime conjectures, to make myself the thoroughfare of thrilling thoughts, live all that can be lived. November 23, 1850

Resolve to read no book, to take no walk, to undertake no enterprise, but such as you can endure to give an account of to yourself. Live thus deliberately for the most part. August 23, 1851

It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart. September 2, 1851

I don’t remember 

a page to tell me how to 

 spend this afternoon.

The art of spending a day . . . I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it, that the day may not have been in vain. How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my every-day business. September 7, 1851.

I wish for leisure and quiet to let my life flow in its proper channels, with its proper currents; when I might not waste the days. December 12, 1851

What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us by letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! This day, yesterday, was as incredible as any other miracle. December 29, 1851

We cannot live too leisurely. Let me not live as if time was short. January 11, 1852

Do the things which lie 

nearest to you – but which are 

difficult to do.

January 12, 1852

It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day. January 20, 1852

Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature, make a day to bring forth something new? April 18, 1852

The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something. April 29, 1852

The world can never be more beautiful than now. May 18, 1852

A man should not live without a purpose, and that purpose must surely be a grand one. December 15, 1852

The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body, — that so the life be not a failure. March 13, 1853

The sun is now warm on my back, and when I turn round I shade my face with my hands. Nature is beautiful only as a place where a life is to be lived.  July 21, 1853 

All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love, — to sing. May 6, 1854

To effect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts . . . Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature . . . determined to make a day of it. Walden

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. October 18, 1855

The advantage of having some purpose, however small, to be accomplished . . .  for only absorbing employment prevails, succeeds, takes up space, occupies territory, determines the future . . . any little enterprise . . . a thing to be done, — some step to be taken, however slight, out of the usual course.  [O]ur days should be spent . . . carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man's genius must have suggested to him [and] the flavor of your life to that extent . . . will be such a sauce as no wealth can buy. August 30, 1856

The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become. August 30, 1856

Each man's necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of. November 18, 1857

It is good policy to be stirring about your affairs, for the reward of activity and energy is that if you do not accomplish the object you had professed to yourself, you do accomplish something else. September 8, 1858

If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow. September 18, 1860

Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, -- the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountain- top through some new vista, -- this is wealth enough for one afternoon. November 22, 1860

To know and possess

the wealth of this afternoon,

get the most of life.

To see the sun rise

or go down every day

full of news to me.

To see what transpires

in the mind and heart of me,

go where my life is.

To attend each thought

every phenomena and

oratorio.

To grow green with spring

yellow and ripe with autumn,

to live each season.

So I help myself,

loving my life as I should –

a day's devotion.

~zphx 20150118

See also 

Walden, An artist in the city of Kouroo

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, To effect the quality of the day

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 ©  2009-2022

In the crucible of my celibate life

purified of all desire,

I enter truth from behind

and call her name --

Simplify!

tinyurl.com/HDTTO-DAY

https://tinyurl.com/HDT-DAY

Seedling shrub oaks in a birch wood.

September 7. 

P. M. – To Cardinal Shore  

I see many seedling shrub oaks springing up in Potter's  field by the swamp-side, some (of last year) in the open pasture, but many more in the birch wood half a dozen rods west from the shrub oaks by the path. 

The former were dropped by the way. They plant in birch woods as in pines. This small birch wood has been a retreat for squirrels and birds. 

When I examine the little oaks in the open land there is always an effete acorn with them. 

Common rose hips as handsome as ever.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1860

They plant in birch woods as in pines. See June 3, 1856 (“As I have said before, it seems to me that the squirrels, etc., disperse the acorns, etc., amid the pines,") See also The Succession of Forest Trees ("It has long been known to observers that squirrels bury nuts in the ground, but I am not aware that any one has thus accounted for the regular succession of forests. . . .In short, they who have not attended particularly to this subject are but little aware to what an extent quadrupeds and birds are employed, especially in the fall, in collecting, and so disseminating and planting the seeds of trees.")


When I examine the little oaks in the open land there is always an effete acorn with them. See May 29, 1859 ("I pick up an oak tree three inches high with the acorn attached.")

Thermometer at 93°.

September 7. 

R. W. E. brought from Yarmouth this week Chrysopsis falcata in bloom and Vaccinium stamineum, deerberry, or squaw huckleberry, — the last with green berries, some as large as cranberries, globular (not pear-shaped), on slender peduncles, not edible, in low ground. 

Yesterday and to-day and day before yesterday, some hours of very warm weather, as oppressive as any in the year, one's thermometer at 93°.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1853

Very warm weather, as oppressive as any in the year.  See September 7, 1858 (" It is an early September afternoon, melting warm and sunny. . .and ever and anon the hot z-ing of the locust is heard."); See also   June 25, 1858 ("the reflected heat is almost suffocating. 93° at 1 P. M"); July 11, 1857 ("Thermometer at 93° + this afternoon."); July 2, 1855 ("At 2 P. M. — Thermometer north side of house ... 93°")

It is an early September afternoon.

September 7. 

P. M. — To Assabet Bath. 

September 7, 2018

I turn Anthony’s corner. It is an early September afternoon, melting warm and sunny; the thousands of grasshoppers leaping before you reflect gleams of light; a little distance off the field is yellowed with a Xerxean army of Solidago nemoralis between me and the sun; the earth-song of the cricket comes up through all; and ever and anon the hot z-ing of the locust is heard. (Poultry is now fattening on grasshoppers.) The dry deserted fields are one mass of yellow, like a color shoved to one side on Nature’s palette. You literally wade in yellow flowers knee-deep, and now the moist banks and low hollows are beginning to be abundantly sugared with Aster Tradescantia.

J. Farmer calls those Rubus sempervirens berries, now abundant, “snake blackberries.” 

Looking for my Maryland yellow-throat’s nest, I find that apparently a snake has made it the portico to his dwelling, there being a hole descending into the earth through it! 

In Shad-bush Meadow the prevailing grasses (not sedges) now are the slender Panicum clandestinum, whose seeds are generally dropped now, Panicum virgatum, in large tufts, and blue-joint, the last, of course, long since done. These are all the grasses that I notice there. 

What a contrast to sink your head so as to cover your ears with water, and hear only the confused noise of the rushing river, and then to raise your ears above water and hear the steady creaking of crickets in the aerial universe! 

While dressing, I see two small hawks, probably partridge hawks, soaring and circling about one hundred feet above the river. Suddenly one drops down from that height almost perfectly perpendicularly after some prey, till it is lost behind the bushes. 

Near the little bridge at the foot of Turtle Bank, Eragrostis capillaris in small but dense patches, apparently in prime (the Poa capillaris of Bigelow). What I have thus called in press is E. pectinacea (P. hirsuta of Bigelow). 

On the flat hill south of Abel Hosmer, Agrostis scabra, hair grass, flyaway grass, tickle grass, out of bloom; branches purplish. That of September 5th was the A. perennans, in lower ground. 

On the railroad between tracks above Red House, hardly yet out; forked aristida, or poverty grass. 

Storrow Higginson brings from Deerfield this evening some eggs to show me, — among others apparently that of the Virginian rail. It agrees in color, size, etc., according to Wilson, and is like (except, perhaps, in form) to one which E. Bartlett brought me a week or ten days ago, which dropped from a load of hay carried to Stow’s barn! So perhaps it breeds here. [Yes. Vide Sept. 9th. Vide Sept. 21st and Dec. 7th, and June 1st, 1859]

Also a smaller egg of same form, but dull white with very pale dusky spots, which may be that of the Carolina rail. 

He had also what I think the egg of the Falco fuscatus, it agreeing with MacGillivray’s sparrow hawk’s egg.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1858

Looking for my Maryland yellow-throat’s nest. See June 10, 1858 (“To Assebet Bath. . .A Maryland yellow-throat's nest near apple tree by the low path beyond the pear tree. Perfectly concealed under the loose withered grass at the base of a clump of birches, with no apparent entrance. ”)

In Shad-bush Meadow the prevailing grasses now are the slender Panicum clandestine, Panicum virgatum,  and blue-joint, the last, of course, long since done. These are all the grasses that I notice there. See August 2, 1858 (“Landed at the Bath-Place and walked the length of Shad-bush Meadow. . . .What I have called the Panicum latifoliumhas now its broad leaves, striped with red, abundant under Turtle Bank, above Bath-Place.”)

Storrow Higginson brings from Deerfield this evening some eggs to show me, — among others apparently that of the Virginian rail. See September 9, 1858 (“My egg (named Sept. 7th) was undoubtedly a meadow-hen’s Rallus Virginiana.”)

A small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, like the holes in the strainer of a watering-pot.

September 7. 

September 7, 2017

Monday. P. M. — To Dodge Brook Wood. 

It occurred to me some weeks ago that the river-banks were not quite perfect. It is too late then, when the mikania is in bloom, because the pads are so much eaten then. 

Our first slight frost in some places this morning. Northwest wind to-day and cool weather; such weather as we have not had for a long time, a new experience, which arouses a corresponding breeze in us. 

Rhus venenata berries are whitening. Its leaves appear very fresh, of a rich, dark, damp green, and very little eaten by insects. 

Go round by the north side of Farmer's (?) Wood, turn southeast into the shut-in field, and thence to Spencer Brook, a place for hawks. 

Bidens chrysanthemoides there; how long? 

There are three or four larch trees near the east edge of the meadows here. One measures two feet and seven inches in circumference at six feet from ground; begins to branch there, but is dead up to ten feet from ground, where its diameter is apparently about twelve feet; and from this it tapers regularly to the top, which is about forty-five feet from the ground, forming a regular, sharp pyramid, yet quite airy and thin, so that you could see a hawk through it pretty well. These are young and healthy trees. 

Measured that large tupelo behind Merriam's, which now is covered with green fruit, and its leaves begin to redden. It is about thirty feet high, with a round head and equally broad near the ground. At one foot from the ground, it is four and a third feet in circumference; at seven feet, three and a third in circumference. The principal [branches] diverge at about fifteen or sixteen feet from the ground and tend upward; the lower ones are small and partly dead. The lowest, at about thirteen or fourteen feet from the ground, are three or four inches in diameter, and first grow out horizontally about six feet, then, making an abrupt angle, straggle downward nearly to the ground, fifteen feet from the tree. This leaves the tree remarkably open in the middle. 

Returning to my boat, at the white maple, I see a small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, dart through the air, as thick as a charge of shot, — now comparatively thin, with regular intervals of sky be tween them, like the holes in the strainer of a watering-pot, now dense and dark, as if closing up their ranks when they roll over one another and stoop downward.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1857

Measured that large tupelo behind Merriam's which now is covered with green fruit, and its leaves begin to redden. It is about thirty feet high. . .See September 25, 1857 (“To tupelo on Daniel B. Clark’s land.”); June 26, 1857 ("The largest tupelo I remember in Concord is on the northerly edge of Staples's clearing."); June 30, 1856 ("By the roadside, Long Plain, North Fairhaven, observed a tupelo seven feet high with a rounded top, shaped like an umbrella, eight feet diameter . . ."); May 25, 1855 ("Tupelo leaf before button-bush; maybe a week now.");  September 30, 1854 ("I find a fine tupelo near Sam Barrett’s now all turned scarlet. I find that it has borne much fruit — small oval bluish berries, . . ..").  See also July 5, 1855 (The great tupelo on the edge of Scituate is very conspicuous for many miles . . .”);  July 27, 1851 ("Visit the large tupelo tree (Nyssa multiflora) in Scituate, whose rounded and open top I can see from Mr. Sewal's, the tree which George Emerson went twenty-five miles to see, called sometimes snag-tree and swamp hornbeam, also pepperidge and gum-tree. Hard to split. We have it in Concord.”); October 6, 1858 (“The tupelo at Wharf Rock is completely scarlet, with blue berries amid its leaves”)

Nyssa sylvatica, commonly known as the Black Tupelo, is a medium-sized deciduous tree native to eastern North America, from New England and southern Ontario south to central Florida and eastern Texas. ~ iNaturalist

September 7, 2017

I see a small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, dart through the air, as thick as a charge of shot . . .See August 9, 1857 ("I see the blackbirds flying in flocks (which did not when I went away July 20th)") See also October 6, 1860 ("The crow, methinks, is our only large bird that hovers and circles about in flocks in an irregular and straggling manner, filling the air over your head and sporting in it as if at home here. They often burst up above the woods where they were perching, like the black fragments of a powder-mill just exploded.")

The Concord is worth a hundred of it for my purposes.

September 7.

Sunday.

At Brattleboro, Vt. a. m. — Climbed the hill behind Mr. Addison Brown's. 

The leaves of the Tiarella cordifolia very abundant in the woods, but hardly sharp-lobed. 

Also observed the leaves of the Hepatica triloba. 

Was that Sium lineare in the pool on the hilltop? Oakes allows only S. latifolium to grow in Vermont. The seeds are apparently ribbed like ours. (Vide press.) 

Found the lemna mantling that pool. Mrs. Brown has found it in flower there. 

Flowering dogwood on hill. 

P. M. — Up the bank of the Connecticut to West River, up that to a brook, and up that nearly to hospital. 

The Connecticut, though unusually high (several feet more than usual), looks low, there being four or five or six rods of bare gravel on each side, and the bushes and weeds covered with clayey soil from a freshet. Not a boat to be seen on it. The Concord is worth a hundred of it for my purposes. It looks narrow as well as shallow. No doubt it is dwarfed by the mountain rising directly from it in front, which, as usual, looking nearer than it is, makes the opposite shore seem nearer. 

The Solidago Canadensis, and the smooth three - ribbed one, and nemoralis, etc., the helianthus (apparently decapetalus), and Aster or Diplopappus linariifolius, Vitis cordifolius (?) (now beginning to be ripe) are quite common along the bank. 

On a bank-side on West River, Urtica Canadensis, apparently in prime and going to seed, the same that Mr. Whitlow once recommended as a substitute for hemp. 

Near by the phryma, or lopseed, with still a few small rose-white flowers. I at first thought it a circrea. 

Plenty of harebells thereabouts, and, by the brook, Polygonum Virginianum, three feet high, mostly gone to seed. 

Apparently Cornus stolonifera (?) by brook (vide press), with the sericea. 

Aster macrophyllus much past prime.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1856

A Book of the Seasons: September 7.

September 7. 

The art of life

I don’t remember 

a page to tell me how to 

spend this afternoon . . .

surrounded by a

rich and fertile mystery – 

may we not probe it?

September 7, 1851

Paddling without sound

toward clouds in the sunset sky,

as the twilight fades.

September 7, 1854

Above the Cliffs we 

hear one or two distant owls 

It is dry and warm.

September 7, 1854

Our first slight frost with

northwest wind and cool weather

arouses a breeze in us

September 7, 1857

 

September 7, 2022

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 © 2009-2019

A Day's Devotion

To know and possess

the wealth of this afternoon –

get the most of life.

To see the sun rise

or go down every day

full of news to me.

To see what transpires

in the mind and heart of me –

go where my life is.

To attend each thought

every phenomena and 

oratorio.

To grow green with spring

yellow and ripe with autumn –

to live each season.

So I help myself,

loving my life as I should –

a day's devotion.

~zphx 20150118

see HDT:

September 7, 1851
January 11, 1852

January 20, 1852

August 23, 1853

March 28, 1859

April 24, 1859

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 ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/HDevoTION

The beauty of the sunset is doubled by the reflection.

September 7.

September 7, 2014

Paddle to Baker Farm just after sundown, by full moon. 

The wind has gone down, and it is a still, warm night, and no mist. It is just after sundown. The moon not yet risen, one star, Jupiter, visible, and many bats over and about our heads, and small skaters creating a myriad dimples on the evening waters. 

There are many clouds about and a beautiful sunset sky, a yellowish golden sky, looking up the river. All this is reflected in the water. The beauty of the sunset is doubled by the reflection. Being on the water we have double the amount of lit and dun-colored sky above and beneath. 

The reflected sky is more dun and richer than the real one. We seem withal to be floating directly into it. This the first autumnal sunset.

In harmony with this fair evening we paddle over the liquid and almost invisible surface, floating directly toward those clouds in the sunset sky. We advance without  sound, by gentle influences, as the twilight gradually fades away. 

The height of the railroad bridge is doubled by the reflection, and the piers appear to rise from the lowest part of the reflection to the rail above, about fifty feet. We float directly under it, between the piers, as if in mid-air, not being able to distinguish the surface of the water, and look down more than twenty feet to the reflected flooring through whose intervals we see the starlit sky. The ghostly piers stretch downward on all sides, and only the angle made by their meeting the real ones betrays the water surface.

The reflected shadow of the Hill is black as night, and we seem to be paddling directly into it a rod or two before us, but we never reach it at all. The trees and hills are distinctly black between us and the moon, and the water black or gleaming accordingly. 

It is dry and warm. Above the Cliffs we hear one or two owls at a distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1854


Paddle to Baker Farm just after sundown, by full moon. See May 8, 1857 ("The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light."); July 12, 1859 ("In the evening, the moon being about full, I paddle up the river to see the moonlight and hear the bullfrogs.")

The reflected shadow of the Hill is black as night, and we seem to be paddling directly into it a rod or two before us, but we never reach it at all .See June 16, 1852 ("Owing to the reflections of the distant woods and hills, you seem to be paddling into a vast hollow country, doubly novel and interesting.") See also November 2, 1857("I think that most men, as farmers, hunters, fishers, etc., walk along a river's bank, or paddle along its stream, without seeing the reflections.")

Paddling without sound

toward clouds in the sunset sky

as the twilight fades.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The beauty of the sunset

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 ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540907

Quick Monadnock hike

September 7.

Across lots to Monadnock, some half-dozen miles in a straight line from Peterboro. Bunch-berries are everywhere now with the summit hardly more than a mile distant in a straight line, but about two miles as they go. Acer Pennsylvanicum, striped maple or moosewood or striped dogwood, but no keys to be seen.

Between the rocks on the summit, an abundance of large and fresh blueberries still, apparently Vaccnium Pennsylvanicum, very large fresh and cooling to eat, supplying the place of water. Though this vegetation was very humble, yet it was very productive of fruit. 

In one little hollow between the rocks grow blueberries, choke-berries, bunch-berries, red cherries, wild currants (Ribes prostratum, with the berry the odor of skunk-cabbage, but a not quite disagreeable wild flavor), a few raspberries still, holly berries, mountain cranberries (Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea), all close together. 

The little soil on the summit between the rocks was covered with the Potentilla tridentata, now out of bloom, the prevailing plant at the extreme summit. Mountain-ash berries also.

We are on the top of the mountain at 1 P.M. The cars leave Troy, four or five miles off, at three. Descending toward Troy, we see that the mountain had spurs or buttresses on every side, by whose ridge you might ascend. It is an interesting feature in a mountain. I have noticed that they will send out these buttresses every way from their centre.

We reach the depot, by running at last, at the same instant the cars, and reach Concord at a quarter after five, i.e. four hours from the time we were picking blueberries on the mountain, with the plants of the mountain fresh in my hat. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1852

The art of life

September 7.

The art of life! Was there ever anything memorable written upon it? I do not remember any page which will tell me how to spend this afternoon.

How to live. How to get the most life. The art of spending a day. Can a youth, a man, do more wisely than to go where his life is to be found? To observe what transpires, not in the street, but in the mind and heart of me!

I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it, that the day may not have been in vain. How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my every-day business.

The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper.

We are receiving our portion of the infinite. We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it, a little? To watch for, describe, all the divine features which I detect in Nature. 

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas, in nature.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1851

The art of life. See  September 2, 1851 ("It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart."); January 12, 1852 ("Do the things which lie nearest to you – but which are difficult to do.");; April 29, 1852 (“The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.”); Walden ("To effect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”) and ("In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God Himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. . . .Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, . . .— determined to make a day of it.”);  see also October 18, 1855 (“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”); November 18, 1857 "Each man's necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of . . .”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, To effect the quality of the day

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas, in nature. See August 30, 1856 ("I get my new experiences still, not at the opera listening to the Swedish Nightingale, but at Beck Stow's Swamp listening to the native wood thrush.”)

I don’t remember 

a page to tell me how to 

spend this afternoon.

How to receive our

portion of the infinite.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. The art of life

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 © 2009-2025

***

Sept. 7.

We sometimes experience a mere fullness of life, which does not find any channels to flow into.

We are stimulated, but to no obvious purpose. 

I feel myself uncommonly prepared for some literary work, but I can select no work.

I am prepared not so much for contemplation, as for forceful expression.

I am braced both physically and intellectually.

It is not so much the music as the marching to the music that I feel.

I feel that the juices of the fruits which I have eaten, the melons and apples, have ascended to my brain and are stimulating it.

They give me a heady force.

Now I can write nervously.

Carlyle ' s writing is for the most part of this character.

Miss Martineau ' s last book is not so bad as the timidity which fears its influence.

As if the popularity of this or that book would be so fatal, and man would not still be man in the world. 

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.

Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.

What shall we say of these timid folk who carry the principle of thinking nothing and doing nothing and being nothing to such an extreme?­

As if, in the absence of thought, that vast yearning of their natures for something to fill the vacuum made the least traditionary expression and shadow of a thought to be clung to with instinctive tenacity.

They atone for their producing nothing by a brutish respect for something.

They are as simple as oxen, and as guiltless of thought and reflection.

Their reflections are reflected from other minds.

The creature of institutions, bigoted and a conservatist, can say nothing hearty.

He cannot meet life with life, but only with words.

He rebuts you by avoiding you.

He is shocked like a woman. 

Our ecstatic states, which appear to yield so little fruit, have this value at least : though in the seasons when our genius reigns we may be powerless for expression, yet, in calmer seasons, when our talent is active, the memory of those rarer moods comes to color our picture and is the permanent paint-pot, as it were, into which we dip our brush.

Thus no life or experience goes unreported at last; but if it be not solid gold it is gold-leaf, which gilds the furniture of the mind.

It is an experience of infinite beauty on which we unfailingly draw, which enables us to exaggerate ever truly.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Their truth subsides, and in cooler moments we can use them as paint to gild and adorn our prose.

When I despair to sing them, I will remember that they will furnish me with paint with which to adorn and preserve the works of talent one day.

They are like a pot of pure ether.

They lend the writer when the moment comes a certain superfluity of wealth, making his expression to overrun and float itself.

It is the difference between our river, now parched and dried up, exposing its unsightly and weedy bottom, and the same when, in the spring, it covers all the meads with a chain of placid lakes, reflecting the forests and the skies.


We are receiving our portion of the infinite.

The art of life! Was there ever anything memorable written upon it?­

By what disciplines to secure the most life, with what care to watch our thoughts.

To observe what transpires, not in the street, but in the mind and heart of me!

I do not remember any page which will tell me how to spend this afternoon.

I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it, by what means to grow rich, that the day may not have been in vain.

What if one moon has come and gone with its world of poetry, its weird teachings, its oracular suggestions?­ So divine a creature, freighted with hints for me, and I not use her! One moon gone by unnoticed! ! 

Suppose you attend to the hints, to the suggestions, which the moon makes for one month, — commonly in vain, — will they not be very different from anything in literature or religion or philosophy?­

The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer.

How to live.

How to get the most life.

As if you were to teach the young hunter how to entrap his game.

How to extract its honey from the flower of the world.

That is my every-day business.

I am as busy as a bee about it.

I ramble over all fields on that errand, and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax.

I am like a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature.

Do I not impregnate and intermix the flowers, produce rare and finer varieties by transferring my eyes from one to an other?­

I do as naturally and as joyfully, with my own humming music, seek honey all the day.

With what honeyed thought any experience yields me I take a bee line to my cell.

It is with flowers I would deal.

Where is the flower, there is the honey, — which is perchance the nectareous portion of the fruit, — there is to be the fruit, and no doubt flowers are thus colored and painted to attract and guide the bee.

So by the dawning or radiance of beauty are we advertised where is the honey and the fruit of thought, of discourse, and of action.

We are first attracted by the beauty of the flower, before we discover the honey which is a foretaste of the future fruit.

Did not the young Achilles (?) spend his youth learning how to hunt?­

The art of spending a day.

If it is possible that we may be addressed, it behooves us to be attentive.

If by watching all day and all night I may detect some trace of the Ineffable, then will it not be worth the while to watch?­

Watch and pray without ceasing, but not necessarily in sadness.

Be of good cheer.

Those Jews were too sad: to another people a still deeper revelation may suggest only joy.

Don't I know what gladness is?­

Is it but the reflex of sadness, its back side?­

In the Hebrew gladness, I hear but too distinctly still the sound of sadness retreating.

Give me a gladness which has never given place to sadness.

I am convinced that men are not well employed, that this is not the way to spend a day.

If by patience, if by watching, I can secure one new ray of light, can feel myself elevated for an instant upon Pisgah, the world which was dead prose to me become living and divine, shall I not watch ever? shall I not be a watchman hence forth?­

If by watching a whole year on the city's walls I may obtain a communication from heaven, shall I not do well to shut up my shop and turn a watchman?­

Can a youth, a man, do more wisely than to go where his life is to [be] found?­

As if I had suffered that to be rumor which may be verified.

We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery.

May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it, a little­?

To devote your life to the discovery of the divinity in nature or to the eating of oysters, would they not be attended with very different results?­

I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are all ruled for dollars and cents.

If the wine, the water, which will nourish me grows on the surface of the moon, I will do the best I can to go to the moon for it.

The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those which we make at home are general and significant.

The further off, the nearer the surface.

The nearer home, the deeper.

Go in search of the springs of life, and you will get exercise enough.

Think of a man's swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling in far-off pastures unsought by him! The seeming necessity of swinging dumb-bells proves that he has lost his way.

To watch for, describe, all the divine features which I detect in Nature.

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas, in nature. 

The mind may perchance be persuaded to act, to energize, by the action and energy of the body.

Any kind of liquid will fetch the pump.

We all have our states of fullness and of emptiness, but we overflow at different points.

One overflows through the sensual outlets, another through his heart, another through his head, and another perchance only through the higher part of his head, or his poetic faculty.

It depends on where each is tight and open.

We can, perchance, then direct our nutriment to those organs we specially use.


September 7, 1851

Elevated for an instant upon Pisgah. See January 24, 1852 ("I feel as if I then received the gifts of the gods with too much indifference . . . Why did I not use my eyes when I stood on Pisgah?")

If it is possible that we may be addressed, it behooves us to be attentive. See  January 1851 ("It is something to know when you are addressed by Divinity and not by a common traveller . . . How many communications may we not lose through inattention!")