April 19, 1859

Was it a vireo I heard this forenoon on the elms? Channing sees the same small flock of sheldrakes, three birds, in Walden still. They have been there a week or two, but I cannot see them the 22d. P. M. - Began to set white pines in R. W. E.’s Wyman lot.

April 16, 1841

I have been inspecting my neighbors’ farms to-day and chaffering with the landholders, and I must confess I am startled to find everywhere the old system of things so grim and assured. Wherever I go the farms are run out, and there they lie, and the youth must buy old land and bring it to. Everywhere the relentless opponents of reform are a few old maids and bachelors, who sit round the kitchen fire, listening to the singing of the tea-kettle and munching cheese-rinds.

April 11, 1841

A greater baldness my life seeks, as the crest of some bare hill, which towns and cities do not afford. I want a directer relation with the sun.

February 26, 1841

Friday. My prickles or smoothness are as much a quality of your hand as of myself. I cannot tell you what I am, more than a ray of the summer’s sun. What I am I am, and say not. Being is the great explainer. In the attempt to explain, shall I plane away all the spines, till it is no thistle, but a cornstalk?

February 5, 1841

Friday. Only on rare occasions am I reminded that man too has a voice, as well as birds and quadrupeds, which breaks up the stillness of nature with its peculiar accent. The least sound pervades and subdues all space to it as long as it fills my ear. Contrasted single with the silence, it is as wide as it. Music is the crystallization of sound. There is something in the effect of a harmonious voice upon the disposition of its neighborhood analogous to the law of crystals; it centralizes itself and sounds like the published law of things. If the law of the universe were to be audibly promulgated, no mortal lawgiver would suspect it, for it would be a finer melody than his ears ever attended to. It would be sphere music.

January 19, 1841

The mind never makes so great effort, without a corresponding energy of the body - when great resolves are entertained its nerves are not relaxed, nor its limbs reclined.

January 17, 1841

A true happiness never happened, but rather is proof against all haps. I would not be a happy, that is, a lucky man, but rather a necessitated and doomed one.

October 29, 1841

All parts of nature belong to one head, as the curls of a maiden’s hair. How beautifully flow the seasons as one year, and all streams as one ocean! Undated entry between 1837 and 1847

September 12, 1841

Sunday. Where I have been There was none seen.

August 9, 1841

It is vain to try to write unless you feel strong in the knees.

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