Thoreau's Works
Walden Conclusion
"I left the woods for as good as a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I has serveral 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 pond-side... The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men... How worn and dusty, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to fo before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there i could best see the moonlight amid the mountains." - Conclusion of Walden (See full text, click HERE).
Chapter 3, Reading, of Walden
"With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future." - Chapter 3, Reading, of Walden (See full text, click HERE).