Thursday, May 13, 2010

For all of those who will soon be graduating

Some words from Henry David Thoreau for those about to graduate:

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favour in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.   In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.”  Henry David Thoreau, Walden or Life in the Woods, Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1981,p. 326

“Why should we be in such desperate haste to suceed, and in such desperate enterprises?  If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden or Life in the Woods, Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1981,p. 328

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