Wednesday, August 17, 2011

paths which the mind travels





.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.  
Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, 
and could not spare any more time for that one.  
It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, 
and make a beaten track for ourselves.  I had not lived there a week
 before my feet wore a path from my door to the pondside; 
and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct... 
 
The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; 
and so with the paths which the mind travels.  How worn and dusty, 
then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts 
of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage,
 but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, 
for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. 
 I do not wish to go below now.




~ Henry David Thoreau
from the last chapter of Walden
art by van gogh






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