spring mood

Walden 

 The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever!

The faint silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the blue-bird, the song-sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell!

What at such time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all the written revelations?

The brooks sing carols and glees to the spring. The grass flames up on the hillsides like a spring fire – “et primitus orifur herba imbribus primoribus evocata” as if the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun, not yellow but green is the color of its flame – the symbol of perpetual youth, the grass blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer.

Civil disobedience

I heartily accept the motto: That government is best which governs least.

I should like to see it acted up to move rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe: that government is best which governs not at all.

When men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

 

Walden and other writings by Henry David Thoreau.