Fickle, Fickle, Fickle!

So, I'm quickly finding that I need to change pace a little bit. As I started trying to dig into Emerson, I find myself losing traction. I need to throw a science/math/fiction curveball in to re-focus. So a trip to the Half-Price book store is upcoming. I've been meaning to read Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle, so that may be up next.

But on to the meat. Quotes. After finishing Thoreau, I had two index cards, covered front and back with references to bits and pieces that I found quotable. And rather then retain a pair of index cards in perpetuity, digitization to commence. So on with that:

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."

"To be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar."

"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things."

"This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it."

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off."

"Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour."

"Solitude is not measured by the miles f space that intervene between a man and his fellows."

"Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."

"Why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?"

"A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love."

"Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect."

"We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us ... and did not spend time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty."

"In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice."

"The universe is wider then our views of it."

"Some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less."

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."

"It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day."

"What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast?"