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Wednesday, April 9, 2025

What Thoreau learned

 Ch. 18 "Conclusion" of the 18 chapters of WALDEN (1854)

paragraph 5

I learned this, at least, by my

experiment (Building his house/

abode near Walden Pond),

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.  He will put some

things behind, will pass an invisible

boundary; new, universal, and more

liberal laws will begin to establish

themselves around and within him;

or the old laws be expanded, and

interpreted in his favor in a more

liberal sense, and he will live with

the license of a higher order of

beings.  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.  If you have

built castles in the air, your work need

not be lost; that is where they should

be.  Now put the foundations under them.

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