No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?
Henry David ThoreauAs the stars looked to me when I was a shepherd in Assyria, they look to me now as a New-Englander.
Henry David ThoreauI have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.
Henry David ThoreauAs the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some, prodigies and portents; some rarely look up at all; their heads, like the brutes,' are directed toward Earth. Some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. The world runs to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go to see.
Henry David Thoreau