In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer... or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh;Ma mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brush,--this the light-dust cloth,--which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes Will keep my talk from getting overwise,... I'm not the one for putting off the proof.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Under the spell of moonlight, music, flowers or the cut and smell of good tweeds, I sometimes feel the divine urge for an hour, a ...day or maybe a week. Then it is gone an my interest returns to corn pone and mustard greens, or rubbing a paragraph with a soft cloth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me--nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is the sinner's dust-tongued bell claps me to churches When, with his torch and hourglass, like a sulphur priest,... His beast heel cleft in a sandal....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ... I had heard of you by t...he hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, "I ha...ve no pleasure in them"; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return with the rain; in the day when the guards of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the women who grind cease working because they are few, and those who look through the windows see dimly; when the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low; when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails; because all must go to their eternal home, and the mourners will go about the streets; before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »