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**********************
His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I
think they were not meant to be read. I alone might read them
intelligently. To most others they would only give false
impressions. I have never been able to understand what he
meant by his life. Why did he care so much about being a writer?
Why did he pay so much attention to his own thoughts? Why
was he so dissatisfied with everyone else, etc? Why was he so
much interested in the river and the woods and the sky, etc?
Something peculiar, I judge.
- Ellery Channing, friend of Thoreau's
**********************
For the past four years, I have been working my way, very slowly, through
Thoreau's very long (2 million word), multi-volume journal. Encouraged
to
keep one by Emerson, Thoreau later considered his journal as his indispensable
compost pile, from which evolved many of his later and morefamous lectures and
essays.
As I've made my way through his journal, I've been stunned at
his lean,
powerful language, at his capacity for analogy, and at the depth of his
insight and the wide-ranging ambit of his thought.
I am launching a new occasional feature on this conference to be known as
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS, with some of the lines and passages I have particularly
liked. Hope you will stop by for an occasional dripping now and then, and
perhaps find something here of interest.
Bill Schechter
***************************************************************
Vol 1, No. 1 (of Drippings)
My first night in a tent--the riches of night. Who would not be a dog and
bay at the moon? (7/2/38)
***
Does not thought and men's lives enrich the earth and change the aspect
of
things as much as the growth of wood? (7/3/38)
***
He who receives an injury is the accomplice of the wrongdoer. (7/9/38)
***
Never was anything so unfamiliar and startling to me as my own thoughts.
(7/10/38)
***
Let us remember not to strive upward too long, but sometimes drop plumb
the other way...(6/20/38)
***
Nothing goes by luck in composition. The best you can write will be the
best you are. Every sentence is the result of a long probation. The
author's character is read from the title page to the end. Of this he
never corrects the proofs. (2/28/41)\
*************************************************************
"One piece of good sense is more memorable than a monument as
high as the moon." -Walden
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol 1., No.2
from Thoreau's Journal
So does each bear witness to all, and the history of all the past may be
read in a single grain of it ashes. (July 8, 1840)
***
What I begin by reading, I must finish by acting. So I cannot stay to hear
a good sermon and applaud at the conclusion, but shall be halfway to
Thermopylae before that. (Feb 18, 1841)
***
In the love of narrow souls, I make many short voyages, but in vain; I
find no sea room. But in great souls, I sail before the wind without a
watch, but never reach shore. (same date)
***
I can not 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. (Feb. 23, 1841)
***
Friends will not only live in harmony but in melody. (April 3, 1841)
***
My life will wait for nobody..It will cut it its own channel like the
mountain stream...What have I to do with plows. I cut another furrow than
you can see...If corn fails, my crop fails not. (April 7, 1841)
***
The nearest approach to discovering who we are is in dreams. It is as hard
to see oneself as to look backward without turning around. (April 27, 1841)
***
The man of principle never gets a holiday (May 3 1841)
***
The fickle person is he that does not know what is right or true
absolutely--who has not an ancient wisdom for a lifetime, but a new
prudence for every hour. (May 6, 1941)
******************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS V. 1, N.3
from Thoreau's Journal
"One piece of good sense is more memorable than a monument as
high as the moon." -Walden
A special contribution to the current L-S building anew vs renovation
debate from Walden, to be interpreted as you will:
"My house never pleased me my eye so much after it was plastered."
******
Who hears the rippling of of rivers will not despair of anything (9/14/41)
****
Heaven is the inmost place. The good have not to travel far (12/26/41)
****
I have often been astonished at the force and passion of style which busy
laboring men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when they make the
effort. It seems as if their sincerity and plainness were the main thing
to be taught in school... (1/5/42)
****
We cannot do well without our sins; they are the highways of our virtues.
(3/21/42)
****
Men have become the tools of their tools. (7/14/42)
****
All nature is classic and akin to art. The critic must at last stand as
mute before a true poem as before an acorn or vine leaf. (8/6/42)
*****
Why not live a hard and emphatic life, full of adventures and work. Learn
much in it, travel much, though it only be in these woods. I sometimes
walk across a field with unexpected expansion and long-missed content; as
if there were a field worthy of me. The usual boundaries of life are
dispersed, and I see in what field I stand. (8/23/42)
******************************************************************
ÔJOURNAL DRIPPINGS' Vol. I, No. 4
from Thoreau's Journal
"My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only
of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love
to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can't discover what that
thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with me. I have lain
fallow long enough." -HDT
¥
Under that rod of sky, there is some plot brewing, some ingenuity has
planted itself. It tattles of more things than the boiling of the
plot...All that is interesting in history or fiction is transpiring
beneath that cloud. The subject of all life and death, all happiness and
grief, goes there under. (12/15/42)
***********
Shall I go down this long hill in the rain to fish in the pond? i ask
myself.
And I say to myself: yes, roam far, grasp life and conquer it. Learn much
and live. Your fetters are knocked off.; you are really free. Stay till
late in the night; be unwise and daring...Do not repose every night as
villagers do.
Men come home at night only from the next field or street....But come home
from afar, from ventures and perils, from enterprises and discovery and
crusading, with faith and experience and character. Do not rest much.
Dismiss prudence, fear, conformity. Remember only what is promised, Make
the daylight and the night hold a candle, though you be falling from from
heaven to earth... (8/24/46)
*******
Most men have forgotten that it was ever morning. (Same)
*******
Exaggeration! Was ever any virtue attributed to a man without
exaggeration? Was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration?Do we not
exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we often recognize ourselves for
the actual men we are. The lightening in an exaggeration of the light. We
live by exaggeration...No truth was ever expressed but with this sort of
emphasis, so that for the first time there was no other truth. The value
of what is really valuable can never never be exaggerated...Who are we?
Are we not all great men? And yet what are we actually? Nothing certainly
to speak of... (12/46)
*********
Love never perjures itself, nor is it mistaken. (1845-7)
*********
There is something pathetic in the sedentary life of men who have
travelled. They most naturally die when they leave the road. (Same)
*********
Many a day spent on the hilltops waiting for the sky to fall that I might
catch something. (Same)
********
All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is
taking place every minute unobserved. (Same)
********
I know of no rule which holds so true as that we are always paid for our
suspicions by finding what we suspect...Our suspicions exercise a
demonical power over the subject of them. By obscure laws of influence,
when we are perhaps unconsciously the subject of another's suspicion,
we
feel a strong impulse, even when it is contrary to another's nature,
to do
what he expects but reprobates. (1837-1847, undated)
*********
A little girl has just brought me a purple finch...We know it chiefly as a
traveler. It reminds me of many things I have forgotten. Many a serene
evening lies snugly packed under its wing. (Same)
******************************************************************
'JOURNAL DRIPPINGS' Vol. 1, No. 5
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal
Final issue of the academic year
A Good Summer To All!
"My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only
of
the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love
to think of...I feel ripe for something...yet can't discover what that
thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with me. I have lain
fallow long enough." -HDT
¥
By a well-directed silence, I have sometimes seen threatening and
troublesome people routed. (1847)
******
Sometimes I have listened so attentively and with so much interest to the
whole expression of a man, I did not hear one word he was saying...(1847)
******
I pray to be delivered from narrowness, partiality, exaggeration, bigotry.
(1850)
*****
It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever what this world is...The sight of
these budding woods intoxicates me...I had no idea so much was going on in
Heywood's meadow. (1850)
******
It is a pleasant fact that you will know no man long, however low in the
social scale, however poor, miserable, intemperate, and worthless he may
appear to be, a mere burden to society, but you will find at last that
there is something which he understands and do can better than any other.
(1850)
******
Men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in their life.
Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe fruit over your head. (1850)
*******
Woe to him who wants a companion, for he is unfit to be companion even of
himself. (1850)
*******
I find the actual to be far less real to be than the imagined. (1850)
*********
Our thoughts are the epochs of our lives; all else is but a journal of the
winds that blew while we were here. (1850)
***********
Let me say to you and to myself in one breath: Cultivate the tree which
you have found to bear fruit in your soil. (1850)
**********
If you can dive a nail and have many nails to drive, drive them....if you
have experiments you would like to try, try them; nows your
chance...Improve every opportunity to be melancholy; Be as melancholy as
you can be and note the result. Rejoice with fate. As for your health,
consider yourself well, and mind your business. Who knows but you are
already dead. Do not be scared already. There are more terrible things to
come, and ever to come. Men die of fright and live of confidence. (1850)
**********
As for conforming outwardly and living your own life inwardly, I have not
a very high opinion of that course...I have no doubt it will prove a
failure. (1850)
*********
All I can say is that I live, breathe, and have my thoughts. (1850)