Henry David Thoreau, A Week on t Quotes

A collection of quotes by Henry David Thoreau, A Week on t.

Henry David Thoreau was an American writer, philosopher, and naturalist, best known for his book Walden, which documents his experiences living in solitude by Walden Pond. Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, and was deeply influenced by transcendentalist ideals and his close friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, his first published work, explores Thoreau's reflections on nature, travel, and life's spiritual aspects. Published in 1849, it received little attention initially but came to be recognized as an important contribution to American literature and Thoreau's philosophical thinking.

We bless and curse ourselves. Some dreams are divine, as well as some waking thoughts. Donne sings of one Who dreamt devoutlier than most use to pray. Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We are scarcely less afflicted when we remember some unworthiness in our conduct in a dream, than if it had been actual, and the intensity of our grief, which is our atonement, measures inversely the degree by which this is separated from an actual unworthiness. For in dreams we but act a part which must have been learned and rehearsed in our waking hours, and no doubt could discover some waking consent thereto. If this meanness has not its foundation in us, why are we grieved at it? In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake. But an unwavering and commanding virtue would compel even its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its ever wakeful authority; as we are accustomed to say carelessly, we should never have dreamed of such a thing. Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.http://national-library.elecbook.net/830.html

Henry David Thoreau, A Week on t

Dreams