If I am not I, who will be?
January 27, 1840
What a tame life we are living! How little heroic it is!
January 8, 1842
What offends me most in my compositions is the moral element in them. The repentant say never a brave word. Their resolves should be mumbled in silence. Strictly speaking, morality is not healthy. Those undeserved joys which come uncalled and make us more pleased than grateful are they that sing.
HENRY D. THOREAU, I to Myself, ed. by Jeffrey S. Cramer (Yale University Press, 2007).
Photo: Pretty boy, Gabe Nevins, in Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, now playing at The Royal.
