Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/392

378 many a winter evening. I have done so a hundred times.

Thus the sky and the earth sympathize, and are subject to the same laws, and in the horizon they, as it were, meet and are seen to be one.

We have such a habit of looking away that we see not what is around us. How few are aware that in winter, when the earth is covered with snow and ice, the phenomenon of the sunset sky is double. The one is on the earth around us, the other in the horizon.

Feb. 13, 1838. It is hard to subject ourselves to an influence. It must steal upon us when we expect it not, and its work be all done ere we are aware of it. If we make advances, it is shy; if, when we feel its presence, we presume to pry into its freemasonry, it vanishes, and leaves us alone in our folly.

All fear of the world or consequences is swallowed up in a manly anxiety to do truth justice.

Feb. 13, 1840. An act of integrity is to an act of duty what the French verb être is to devoir. Duty is that which devrait être. Duty belongs to the understanding, but genius is not dutiful. The perfect man has both genius and talent; the one is his head, the other, his foot. By one, he is; by the other, he lives.