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September 2000
These drippings from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau
continue (on an occasional basis) nto their second year.
My journal should be the record of my life. 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 do nothing, can't discover
what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with me. I have
lain fallow long enough. (1850)
****
I pray to be delivered from narrowness, partiality, exaggeration, bigotry.
(1850)
****
A truly good book is something so wildly natural and primitive, mysterious
and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile, as a fungus or lichen. Suppose a
muskrat or beaver were to turn his views to literatureÐwhat a fresh view
of nature would be preserved! (1850)
****
What shall we do with a man who is afraid of the woods, their solitude and
darkness? What salvation is there for him? Some of our richest days are
those in which no sun shines outwardly, but so much the more a sun
shining inwardly. I love nature, because it is so sincere. It never cheats
me. It never jests...I lie and rely on the earth. (1850)
****
I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it, and see that I did
not realize or appreciate it before. (1850)
*****
But sometimes it happens that I cannot easily shake off the village..I am
out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return my senses like a bird or
beast. (1850)
****
I must live, above all, in the present.
****
If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, neglecting
my particular calling, there would be nothing left living for. I trust
that I shall never sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. (1851)
***
My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the
spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated even with the fumes, call it, of
that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights
unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant. (1851)
****
To attain a true relation to one human creature is enough to make a year
memorable. (1851)
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JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. II, No. 2
OCTOBER 2000
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
I wish my townsmen to consider that, whatever the human law, neither an
individual or a nation can never deliberately commit the least amount of
injustice without having to pay the penalty for it. (3/30/51)
* * *
Let us entertain opinions of our own. Let us be a town and not a suburb.
(same)
* * *
More fatal, as effecting his [a person's] good or ill fame, is the
utterance of the least inexpugnable truth concerning him by the humblest
individual, that [is] the sentence of the supremest court in the land.
(4/26/51)
* * *
I do not know but there are some who, if they were tied to the whipping
post and could get one hand free, would use it to ring the bells and fire
the cannon to celebrate their liberty. (94/29/51)
* * *
What is a chamber to which the sun does not rise in the morning? What is a
chamber to which the sun does not set at evening? Such are often the
chambers of the mind, for the most part. (4/30/51)
* * *
What is the singing of the birds or any natural sound compared with the
voice of one we love? To one we love we are related as to nature in the
spring. Our dreams are mutually intelligible. We take the census, and find
that there is one. (Same)
* * *
I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made
slaves of men... (5/6/51)
* * *
How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation
of natural phenomenon to the preservation of moral and intellectual
health. The discipline of school or of business can never impart such
serenity to the mind. (Same)
* * *
[Thoreau had his teeth extracted. Ether anaesthesia, a fairly recent
innovation, was used in the procedure. Here Thoreau reflects on his drug
experience:]
If you have an an inclination to travel, take the ether; you go beyond the
furthest star...[However] it is not necessary for them to take the ether,
who in their sane and waking hours are ever translated by a thought, nor
for them to see with their hindheads, who sometimes see from their
foreheads; nor listen to spiritual knockings, who attend to intimations of
reason and conscience. (5/12/51)
* * *
If I have got false teeth, I trust that I have not got a false conscience.
(Same)
* * *
"Splendid moonlight"...I am wont to think all men are aware of
the
miracle, that they are silently worshipping this manifestation of divinity
elsewhere. But when I go in the house I am undeceived; they are absorbed
in checkers or a novel, though they may have been advertised of the
brightness through the shutters. (5/18/51)
* * *
I think the existence of man in nature as the divinist and most startling
of all facts. It is a fact which few realize. (5/20/51)
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JOURNAL DRIPPINGS VOL. II, NO. 3
December 2000
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
I have heard now within a few days that peculiar dreaming sound of the
frogs which belongs to summerÐtheir mid-summer night's dream...Who
shall
say there is no god if there is a just man?...(Now) we have not only the
idea and vision of the divine themselves--we have brothers. There is the
representative of the divinity on earth, of whom all things fair and noble
are expected. We have the material of heaven here. I think the standing
miracle to man is man. Beyond the paling wonder, come rain or shine, hope
or doubt, there dwells a man, an actual being who can sympathize with our
sublimest thoughts. The revolutions of nature are infinitely glorious and
cheering, hinting to us of a remote future, of possibilities untold; but
startling near to us, someday we find a fellow man. (May 21, 1851)
***********
My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awakening in the morning.
I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered
dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place,
and in the act of re-entering its native body had diffused an elysian
fragrance around (May 24)
******
A sane and growing man is revolutionized every day. What institutions of
man can survive a morning experience? A single night's sleep, if we have
indeed slumbered and forgotten anything and grown in our sleep, puts them
behind us like the River Lethe. It is no unusual thing to see the kingdom
of this world pass away. (Same).
******
Men will pay something to look into a travelling showman's box, but
not
look upon the fairest prospects of earth. A vista where you have the near
green horizon contrasted with the distant blue one, terrestrial with
celestial earth. The prospect of a vast horizon must be accessible in our
neighborhood. Where men of enlarged views must be educated. An
unchangeable kind of wealth, a real estate. (Same)
***********
Now at 8:30pm, I hear the dreaming of the frogs. So it seems to me, so
significantly passes my life away. It is like the dreaming of frogs on a
summer evening. (Same)
***********
I saw an organ grinder this morning before a rich man's house, thrilling
the streets with harmony, loosening the very paving stones and tearing
the routine of my life to rags and tatters... (May 27)
********
I wonder that I ever get five miles on my way, my walk is so crowded with
events and phenomena. How many questions there are that I have not put to
the inhabitants.
(June 7)
*********
There lies Fairhaven Lake, indistinguishable from fallen sky. (June 11)
*********
There is no French Revolution in nature, no excess; she is warmer or
cooler by a degree or two. (Same)
*********
The woodland paths are never to seen to such advantage as in a moonlit
night, so embowered, still opening before you almost against your
expectation as you walk; you are so completely in the woods and yet your
feet meet no obstacles. It is as if it were not a path, but an open
winding passage through the bushes, which your feet find. ...Ah that life
that I have known! How hard it is to remember what is most memorable! We
remember how we itched, not how our hearts beat. (Same)
*********
[When finally you reach town], "you catch yourself merely walking." (Same)
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JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. 2, No. 4
January 2001
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
The water shines with an inward life, like a heaven on earth. The silent
depth, serenity, and majesty of water. Strange that man should distinguish
gold and diamonds when these precious elements are so common. I saw a
distinct river by moonlight, making no noise, yet flowing to the sea, like
melted silver reflecting the moonlight...There is a certain glory that
attends water at night. By it the heavens are related to earth,
undistinguishable from a sky beneath you. (June 13, 1851)
********************
We live but a fraction of our life. Why do we not let on the flood, raise
the gates, and set our wheels in motion. He that hath ears to hear, let
him hear. Employ your senses. (Same)
******************
How awful is the least unquestionable meanness. When we cannot deny that we
have been guilty of it. (June 29)
************
A traveller! I love his title. A traveller is to be reverenced as such. His
profession is the best symbol of our lives. Going from...toward-; it is the
history of everyone of us. I am interested in those that travel in the
night. (July 2)
*************
[The elms] tower, they arch, they droop over the streets like chandeliers
of darkness. (July 7)
*************
How the mind should be kept pure and free of rubbish--shall it be a quarter
of heaven itself?...It is so hard to forget what is less than useless to
remember...Every thought that passes through our mind helps to wear and
tear it, and to deepen the ruts. (Same)
************
Be ever so little distracted, your thoughts so little confused, your
engagements so few, your attention so free, your existence so mundane, that
in all places and in all hours, you can hear the sound of crickets in those
seasons when they are to be heard. (Same)
*********************
I hear the cockerels crow in Hubbard's yard, and morning is already
anticipated...The sound is wonderfully exhilarating at all times. These
birds are worth more to me for their crowing and cackling than for their
drumsticks and eggs. (July 8)
*********************
The creaking of crickets seems at the very foundation of all sound. At
least I cannot tell it from a ringing in my ears. It is a sound from
within, not without. You cannot dispose of it by listening to it. It
reminds me that I am a denizen of the earth. (July 12)
*******************
My life was ecstasy. In youth, before I lost any of my senses, I can
remember that I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible
satisfaction--both its weariness and its refreshment were sweet...I could
remember how I was astonished. The earth was the most glorious musical
instrument and I was audience to its strains...I wondered if a mortal had
ever known what I knew. ...I was daily intoxicated, and yet no man could me
intemperate. With all your science, can you tell me how it is, and whence
it is, that light comes into the soul? (July 16)
*****************
I remember how glad I was when I was kept from school a half a day to pick
huckleberries on a neighboring hill all by myself to make a pudding for
family dinner. Ah, they got nothing but the pudding, but I got invaluable
experience beside! A half a day of liberty like that was like the promise
of life eternal. It was emancipation in New England. O, what a day there
was my countrymen! (Same)
***************
It is a test question affecting the youth of a person---Have you knowledge
of the morning?...(July 18)
******************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. 2, No. 5
February 2001
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
Here I am 34 years old, and yet my life is wholly unexpanded. How much is
in the germ! Methinks my seasons revolve more slowly than those of
nature. I am differently timed...If my curve is large, why bend it to a
smaller circle? If life is a waiting, so be it. (July 19, 1851)
***********
Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry, uninhabited roads,
which lead away from towns, which lead us away from temptation, which
conduct to the outside of the earth...where you may forget what country
you are travelling...It is wide enough, wide as the thoughts it allows to
visit you...There I can walk and stalk and pace and plod. That's the
road
I can travel, that's the particular Sudbury I am bound for...There I
can
walk, and recover the lost child that I am without ringing any bell...The
deliberate pace of a thinker never made a road the worse for travelling
on. (July 21)
***********
With most men, life is postponed to some trivial business, and so
therefore is heaven. Men think foolishly they may abuse and misspend as
they please and when they get to heaven turn over a new leaf. (Same)
***********
Men are generally spoiled by being so civil and well-disposed. You can
have no profitable conversation with them, they are so conciliatory,
determined to agree with you. It is possible for man to wholly disappear
and be merged in his manners....A cross man, a coarse man, an eccentric
man, a silent man, who does not drill wellÐ of him there is some hope.
Your gentlemen are all alike. They utter their opinions as if it was not a
man who uttered them...The laborers whom I know, the loafers, the fishers,
and hunters, I can spin yarns with profitably....(Same)
************
Remember the creator in the days of your youth, i.e., lay up a store of
natural influences. Sing while you may, before the days of evil come. He
that hath ears, let him hear, see, smell, taste while these sense are
fresh and pure. There is always a kind of fine aeolian harp music to be
heard in the air...To ears that have been expanded, what a harp this world
is! (Same)
************
When to resist or disobey laws: "Cut the leather only where the shore
pinches." (Same)
************
The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of the clouds that pass over
the earth. Pay not too much heed to them. Let not the traveller stop for
them...I kept on, and in a moment the sun shone on my walk, within and
without. (July 22)
*************
What right have parents to beget, to bring up, and attempt to educate
children in a
city? (July 25)
*************
I am bothered to walk with those who wish to keep step with me. It is not
necessary to keep step with your companion, as some endeavor to do. (Same)
*************
Ah, what a dry compilation is the Annual Scientific Discovery....One
sentence of perennial poetry would make me forget, would atone for,
volumes of mere science...The question is not what you look at, but what
you see. (August 5)
*************
A man must generally get away some hundreds or thousands of miles before
he can be said to begin his travels. Why not begin his travels at
home?...It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his
native village. (August 6)
************
I am perchance most and most profitably interested in the things which I
already know a little about; a mere and utter novelty is a mere
monstrosity to me...I do not know that I am very fond of novelty. I wish
to get a clearer notion of what I already have some inkling. (Same)
***********
On describing clouds and the kind of light created: "Men will travel
far
to see less interesting sights than these." (August 8)
******************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. 2, No. 6
March 2001
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
Why should pensiveness be a kin to sadness? There is a certain fertile
sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is
positively joyful to me. It saves my life from being trivial. My life flows
with a deeper current. (August 17, 1851)
*******************
To shave all of the fields and meadows of New England clean! If men did
this but once, we would never hear the last of that labor...Mexico was won
with less exertion and less true valor than are required to do one season's
haying in New England...Every field is a battlefield to the mower Ða
pitched battled too. (Same)
*********************
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Me
thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to
flow...The writing which consists with habitual sitting is mechanical,
wooden, dull to read (August 19)
***************
What if a man were earnestly and widely to set about recollecting and
preserving the thoughts which he has had? How many perchance are
unrecoverable! (Same).
********************
I fear that the character of my knowledge is from year to year becoming
more distinct and scientific, that in exchange for views as wide as
heaven's cope, I am being narrowed down to the field of a microscope.
I see
details, not wholes, not the shadow of the whole. I count parts and say, "I
know." (Same)
******************
We are armed with language to describe each leaf in the field...but not to
describe a human character. With equally wonderful indistinctness and
confusion, we describe men. (August 20)
*********************
That certainly is the best government where the inhabitants are least often
reminded of the government (Where a man cannot be a poet even without
danger of being made a Poet-Laureate! When he cannot be healthily
neglected, and grow up a man, and not an Englishman merely!) (August 21)
************************
The intellect of most men is barren....They neither fertilize or are
fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with nature that gives birth to
imagination. (Same)
*************************
It is the fault of some excellent writers...that they express themselves
with too great fullness and detail..They say all they mean. Their sentences
are not concentrated and nutty. Sentences which suggest far more than they
say, which have an atmosphere about them, which do not merely report an
old, but make a new impression; sentences which suggest as many things and
are as durable as a Roman Aqueduct; to frame these, that is the art of
writing. (August 22)
************************
Do not neglect to speak of men's low life and affairs with sympathy
....Resolve to read no book, to take no walk, to understand no enterprise,
but such as you can endure to give an account of to yourself. Live thus
deliberately for the most part. (August 23)
**************************
With what sober joy I stand to let the water drip from me and feel my fresh
vigor, who have been bathing in the same tub as the muskrat! Such a
medicated bath as only nature furnishes...How ample and generous was
nature. My inheritance is not narrow!
******************************
How can man sacrifice to supper this serene and sacred time. Our customs
turn the hour of sunset to a trivial time...It might be well if our repasts
were taken out of doors, in view of the sunset and the rising starsÐ...if
with our bread and butter, we took a slice of the red western sky. (Same)
******************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. 2, No. 7
April 2001
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
There is some advantage, intellectually and spiritually, in taking wide
views with the bodily eye and not pursuing an occupation which holds the
body prone. There is some advantages, perhaps, in attending to the general
features of a landscape over studying the particular plants and animals
which inhabit it. A man may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he
walked under a shed. The poet is more in the air than the naturalist,
though they may walk side by side. Granted that you are out-of-doors; but
what if the the outer door is open, if the inner door is shut! You must
walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent on
seeing things. Throw away a whole day for a single expansion, a single
inspiration of air. (August 21, 1851)
*****************
We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. The body, the
senses, must conspire with the mind. (Sept 2)
***************
A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and
the air and the atmosphere writing. (Same)
***************
It is always essential that we love to do what we are doingÐdo it with
a
heart. (Same)
**************
There is a reptile in the throat of the greedy man, always thirsty and
faminishing. (Same)
***************
What is a horse but an animal that has lost its liberty? What is it but a
system of of slavery? And do you not thus by insensible and unimportant
degrees come to human slavery? Has lost its liberty! and has man got any
more liberty himself for having robbed the horse, or has he lost just as
much as his own and become more like the horse he has robbed. Is not the
other end of the bridle in this case, too, coiled around his own neck?
(Sept 3)
***************
Walk often in drizzly weather, for then the small weeds, covered with rain
drops like beads, appear more beautiful than ever. (Same)
****************
For roads, I think a poet cannot tolerate more than a footpath through the
fields...It is not for the muse to think of cart pathsÐ Pray, what other
path would you have than a footpath. This is the track of man alone. One
walks in a wheel path with less emotion; he is at a greater distance from
man. But this footpath was perchance worn by the bare feet of human
beings, and he cannot but think with interest of them.
*****************
It is wise to write on many subjects, to try many themes, that you might
find the right and inspiring one. Be greedy on occasions to express your
thought. Improve the opportunities to draw analogies. There are
innumerable avenues to the perception of the truth. Improve the suggestion
of each object, however humble, however slight and transparent the
provocation. What else is there to be improved? Who knows what
opportunities he may neglect. It is not in vain that the mind turns this
way or that: follow its leading; apply it whither it inclines to go. Probe
the universe in a myriad points. Be avaricious of these impulses. You must
try a thousand themes before you find the right one, as nature makes a
thousand acorns to make one oak. He is a wise man and experienced who
takes many views; to whom stones and plants and animals and a myriad
subjects have each suggested something, contributed something. (Same).
******************
A part of autumnal tints, red leaves. Leaves acquire red blood. Red colors
touch our blood and excite us as well as cows and geese. (Sept. 4)
*****************
All wisdom is the reward of a discipline conscious or unconscious. (Sept.
5)
******************
How excited we are, how much recruited, by a great many particular
fragrances. A field of ripening corn, now at night, that has been topped,
with the stalks stacked up to dryÐan inexpressibly dry, rich, sweet,
ripening scent. I feel as if I were an ear of ripening corn myself. (Same)
******************************************************************
JOURNAL DRIPPINGS Vol. II, No. 8
May 2001
Excerpts from Thoreau's Journal.
The Adventure Continues.
**********
Have a good summer!
As many of the recipients of the "Drippings" will soon be leaving
their
college campuses (campi?), I'd like to wish everyone a good, restful, and
happy summer. These will be the last Drippings of this year
***********
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. (Sept 7, 1851)
[Editor: Readers, has Franklin Roosevelt been tracked down to his his
source?]
******************
Our moments of inspiration are not lost, though we have no 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 make use of them as paint to guild and adorn our prose. (Same)
********************
I do not remember the page which will tell me how to spend this afternoon.
(Same).
*********************
How to live. How to get the most life. As if you were to teach the young
hunter to entrap his game. How to extract its honey from the flower of the
world. That is my every day business. I am busy as a bee about it. I ramble
over all fields on that errand (Same)
**********************
If by watching a whole year on the city's walls, I may obtain communication
from Heaven, shall I not do well to shut up my shop and turn a watchman?
...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 divinity in nature or to the eating of oysters, would
these not be attended with very different results? (Same)
**********************
I cannot easily buy a blank book to write thoughts inÐthey are all ruled
for dollars and cents. (Same)
**********************
My profession is always to be on the alert to find God in nature, to know
his lurking places, to know all the oratios, the operas in nature. (Same)
***************
The life of man is like a dream. (Sept 9)
*************************************************************
[THIS IS THE LAST DRIPPING DRAWN FROM VOL. II OF THOREAU'S JOURNAL.
VOLUMES I & II COVER 993 PAGES. ONLY TWELVE VOLUMES REMAIN].
*************************************************************
The inhabitants of Sudbury are farmers almost exclusively, exceedingly
rough and countrified and more illiterate than usual, very tenacious of
their rights and dignities, and difficult to deal with.
******************
What can be uglier than a country occupied by grovelling, coarse and
low-lived men? No scenery will redeem it. What can be more beautiful than
any scenery inhabited by heroes? Any landscape would be glorious to me, if
I were assured that its sky was arched over by a single hero. (Sept 27)
*******************
At 8 o'clock, the frogs have begun, with with the low moon shining on
them,
look like cob webs or think white veils spread over the earth. They are the
dreams or visions of the meadow.
(Oct 1)
********************
As moonlight is to sunlight, so are fairies to men. (Oct 6)
********************
[In regards to Emerson]: "We do not know what hinders each other from
coming together."
(Oct 10)
******************
Now is the time to enjoy the dry leaves. Now all nature is a dried herb,
full of medicinal odors. (Same).
*****************
Many maples around the edges of the meadows are quite bare, like smoke.
(Same)
*****************
The echo is to some extent an independent sound and therein is the charm
and magic of it. It is not merely a repetition of my voice, but it is in
some measure the voice of the wood. (Same)
******************
The obstacles which the heart meets with are like granite blocks which one
alone cannot move. She who was as the morning light to me is now neither
the morning star or the evening star. We meet but to find each other
further asunder, and the oftener we meet the more rapid our divergence. So
a star of the first magnitude pales in the heavens, not from any fault in
the observer's eye, nor from any fault in itself, perchance, but because
a
progress in its own system has put a greater distance between. The night
is oracular. What have been the intimations of the night? I ask. How have
you passed the night? Good-night! (same)
******************************************************************