Sunday, February 05, 2006

Solitude

Thoreau writing of the time he lived at the cabin in the woods on Walden Pond...

“Men frequently say to me, “I should think you would feels lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially.” I am tempted to reply to such,- This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yander star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the dpot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction.” -Thoreau

“(A man) inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very sure I lked it pasably well; I was not joking.” -Thoreau

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