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March 6, 2009

I can stand as remote from myself as from another

 I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way.
It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.

HDT (Walden)
via thoreauswine.blogspot.com

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February 5, 2009

Feb. 5, 1841. . . . Music is the crystallization of sound.

Feb. 5, 1841. . . . Music is the crystallization of sound. There is something in the effect of a harmonious voice upon the disposition of its neighborhood analogous to the law of crystals. It centralizes itself, and sounds like the published law of things. If the law of the universe were to be audibly promulgated, no mortal law giver would suspect it, for it would be a finer melody than his ears ever attended to. It would be sphere music.
via archive.org

Henry David Thoreau (journals)

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January 15, 2009

In the large towns and cities,the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. (HDT)



In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment. (HDT-Walden)

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