Status Updates From The Heart of Thoreau's Jour...

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. (March 11, 1856)

I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire -- thinner than the paper on which it is printed -- then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.

Ah, dear nature, the mere remembrance, after a short forgetfulness, of the pine woods! I come to it as a hungry man to a crust of bread.

Notwithstanding a sense of unworthiness which possesses me, not without reason, notwithstanding that I regard myself as a good deal of a scamp, yet for the most part the spirit of the universe is unaccountably kind to me, and I enjoy perhaps an unusual share of happiness.

amazing always to me how a good teacher can transform something. still don't LOVE Thoreau, hardly even like him, but this is no longer actual painful torture to read, because of the way Cole has taught him with earnestness and interest and knowledge!