Thoreau began a journal at the suggestion of his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson on October 22, 1837. Thoreau was just 20 at the time and his journal writing continued for the rest of his life. His first entry began with this: ""What are YOU doing now?" he asked. "Do you keep a journal?" So I make my first entry..."
From Thoreau's Journal
If with closed ears and eyes I consult consciousness for a moment – immediately are all walls and barriers dissipated – earth rolls from under me, and I float, by the impetus derived from the earth and the system – a subjective – heavily laden thought, in the midst of an unknown & infinite sea, or else heave and swell like a vast ocean of thought – without rock or headland. Where are all riddles solved, all straight lines making there their two ends to meet – eternity and space gamboling familiarly through my depths. I am from the beginning – knowing no end, no aim. No sun illumines me, – for I dissolve all lesser lights in my own intenser and steadier light - I am a restful kernel in the magazine of the universe. ~ Journal, August 1838
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I felt that it would be to make myself the laughing-stock of the scientific community to describe to them that branch of science which specially interests me, in as much as they do not believe in a science which deals with the higher law. So I was obliged to speak to their condition and describe to them that poor part of me which alone they can understand. The fact is I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot. Now I think of it, I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist. That would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not understand my explanation. ~ Journal, March 5, 1853
* * * Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i.e. we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for. ~ Journal, July 2, 1857
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Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone. ~ Journal, December 4, 1860
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Many college text-books which were a weariness and a stumbling-block when studied, I have since read a little in with pleasure and profit. ~
Journal, February 19, 1854
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It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. ~
Journal, October 4, 1859
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The question is not what you look at, but what you see. ~
Journal, August 5, 1851
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Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. ~ Journal, September 13, 1852
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From Walden * * * Men frequently say to me, "I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially." I am tempted to reply to such,—This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? * * * The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns * * * * * * I stand in awe of my body. This matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts of which I am one. That my body might, but I fear bodies. I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries, think of our life in nature, daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, rock, trees, the wind on our cheeks, the solid earth, the actual world, the common sense. Contact, contact… Who are we? Where are we? ~ The Contact Passage, Maine Woods 1848
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. . . . In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor
weakness weakness. ~ Walden, 1854
I have found that no exertion of legs can bring two minds much nearer
to one another. ~ Walden, 1854
to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is
but a morning star. ~ Walden, 1854
Letter to H.G.O. Blake, January 1, 1859
