‘I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. (Location 2725)
In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. (Location 2728)
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” — Thoreau (Location 2950)
The list required that he visit the graves of Concord’s most famous philosophers and friends, the champions of self-reliance and American exceptionalism—Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. (Location 2959)
Thoreau’s Maine Woods. He stood and read a passage from Thoreau’s essay on Mount Katahdin: “…I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?” (Location 3016)
