Do Arrependimento

“ Minhas ações são reguladas, e conformes com o que eu sou e com a minha condição. Não posso fazer mais; e nas coisas que não estão em nossas forças, não tem lugar o arrependimento, mas sim o pesar. Imagino Inúmeras naturezas mais ordenadas que a minha, e contudo não melhoro minhas faculdades: como nem o meu braço nem o meu espírito se tornam mais vigorosos por eu conceber outros tais que o sejam. Se o imaginar e o desejar um procedimento mais nobre que o nosso produzissem o arrependimento do nosso, teríamos que nos arrepender de nossas ações mais inocentes: porquanto julgamos, decerto, que a natureza mais excelente as teria praticado com maior perfeição e dignidade; e desejaríamos fazer outro tanto.”

Montaigne, Do Arrependimento

To live so sturdily

 

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan”

 

Thoreau, Walden

 

 

 

To be awake enough ...

“The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.”

Thoreau, Walden In the Woods

As the sailor or the fugitive slave

“It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course. “

 

Thoureau, In the Woods

 

 

I preferred some things to others, and especially valued my freedom

“ As I preferred some things to others, and especially valued my freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish to pend my time in earning rich carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet. If there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire these things, and who know how to use them when acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are “industrious,” and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say.”

 

Thoureau, In the Woods