Walden Chapter 18 Notes - Conclusion

Walden Chapter 18 Notes - Conclusion

1. To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery.

   • The universe is wider than our views of it.
     • The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels.
   • Author wants readers to travel the world and explore new cultures and traditions.

2. The author left the woods for as good a reason as he went there. It seemed to him that he had several more lives to live, and count not spare any more time for that one.

   • The author learned this, at least, in his experiment ; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
     • Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense?
       • No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well as the truth.
     • The purity men love is like the mists which envelop the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.
       • If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
       • However mean your life is, meet it and live it ; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault- finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is .
   • The author desires to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for he is connivance that he he cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression.
   • The author went to the woods to explore himself, and achieved that goal.