📜 New in the Commonplace Communiqué → 00057 ¶ from January 13, 1857 journal entry ¶ Henry David Thoreau
I am, of course, hopelessly ignorant and unbelieving until some divinity stirs within me. Ninety-nine one hundredths of our lives we are mere hedgers and ditchers, but from time to time we meet with reminders of our destiny. — We hear the kindred vibrations, music! and we put out our dormant feelers into the limits of the universe. We attain to wisdom that passeth understanding. The stable continents undulate. The hard and fixed becomes fluid.
“Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man.”When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
—Henry David Thoreau
—from January 13, 1857 journal entry
—found in Autumn and Winter: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau (1929)