Thoreau

February 4, 1857: "I see that the infidels and skeptics have formed themselves into churches and weekly gather together at the ringing of a bell." - The Diary of Henry David Thoreau

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Title: Stained glass, Brimpsfield church
Flickr User IainR

2 January 1854, "Already we begin to anticipate spring, and this is an important difference between this time and a month ago. We begin to say that the day is springlike.

Is not January the hardest month to get through? When you have weathered that, you get into the gulfstream of winter, nearer the shores of spring" - The Diary of Henry David Thoreau


Title: Boomer coming inside from the Chicago Snowpocalypse January 2011. She loved it.
Flickr User MikieDoggie

January 31, 1854 - “We too have our thaws. They come to our January moods, when our ice cracks, and our sluices break loose. Thought that was frozen up under stern experience gushes forth in feeling and expression. There is a freshet which carries away dams of accumulated ice.” – The Diary of Henry David Thoreau


Title: untitled
Flickr User pichead

January 29, 1852:

"In my experience I have found nothing so truly impoverishing as what is called wealth, i. e. the command of greater means than you had before possessed, though comparatively few and slight still, for you thus inevitably acquire a more expensive habit of living, and even the very same necessaries and comforts cost you more than they once did.

Instead of gaining, you have lost some independence, and if your income should be suddenly lessened, you would find yourself poor, though possessed of the same means which once made you rich. Within the last five years I have had the command of a little more money than in the previous five years, for I have sold some books and some lectures; yet I have not been a whit better fed or clothed or warmed or sheltered, not a whit richer, except that I have been less concerned about my living, but perhaps my life has been the less serious for it, and to balance it, I feel now that there is a possibility of failure." - The Diary of Henry David Thoreau


Title: Thoreau Statue
Flickr User
This statue of Henry David Thoreau, titled "Self Examination" stands in front of a replica of his one-room home at Walden Pond.

January 27, 1855: "New England is flooded with the "Official Schemes of the Maryland State Lotteries," and in this that State is no less unprincipled than in her slaveholding. Maryland, and every fool who buys a ticket of her, is bound straight to the bottomless pit. The State of Maryland is a moral fungus." - The Diary of Henry David Thoreau


Title: Lottery tickets for Lilith Penguin
Flickr User VeeMan

25 January 1858: "You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand-heap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain." - The Diary of Henry David Thoreau


Title: dirty hands from planting shallots
Flickr User Kristen + Brian

January 23, 1858, "To insure health, a man’s relation to Nature must come very near to a personal one; he must be conscious of a friendliness in her; when human friends fail or die, she must stand in the gap to him. I cannot conceive of any life which deserves the name, unless there is a certain tender relation to Nature. This it is which makes winter warm, and supplies society in the desert and wilderness. Unless Nature sympathizes with us and speaks to us, as it were, the most fertile and blooming regions are barren and dreary." - The Diary of Henry David Thoreau


Title: The Leaf Galaxy
Flickr User masahiro miyasaka

January 21, 1852, "A man does best when he's most himself" - The Diary of Henry David Thoreau



title: David and Angus
Flickr User: Robert McDiarmid

19 January 1841, "I anticipate a more thorough sympathy with nature, when my thigh-bones shall strew the ground like the boughs which the wind has scattered. Thus troublesome humors will flower into early anemonies, and perhaps in the very lachrymal sinus, nourished by its juices, some young pine or oak will strike root."
- The Diary of Henry David Thoreau


Title: Spring in the Antelope Valley #3
Flickr User Bill Bouton

January 17, 1852, "In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the neccesity for me to be out and behold the western sky before sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer. What is your thought like? That is the hue, that the purity, and transparency, and distance from the earthly taint of my inmost mind, for whatever we see without a symbol of something within, and that which is farthest off is the symbol of what is deepest within. The lover of contemplation, accordingly, will gaze much into the sky. Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair days." - The Diary of Henry David Thoreau


title: a midnight sky
flickr user: asmundur