Echoes

I set out alone, having neither fellow-traveller in whose companionship I might find cheer, nor caravan whose party I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me and a desire long-cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries.

I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know, they do not approve, and what they approve, I do not know.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Do not follow in the footsteps of the old masters, but seek what they sought — and find it in the mountains, the rivers, and the open sky.

I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

My soul, my soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you—are you there? I have returned, here I am again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you again, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you anew. Shall I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know, the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable, which we call "divine". There is no other way. All other ways are false paths.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's; I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!

I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.

It would be better for me... that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.

I whose ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.

I had ambition not only to go farther than anyone had done before, but as far as it was possible for man to go.

It is himself he is approaching, no other; and he should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style — all mannerisms, tricks, adornments.

I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all.

Goodbye, Bill. I die like a true-blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning — organize!

Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.

The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.

Be a lamp unto yourself, be a refuge to yourself. Take yourself to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the Truth as a refuge.

But do not ask me where I am going, As I travel in this limitless world, Where every step I take is my home.

Never did I think so much, never did I realize my own existence so much, never was I so much alive, so much myself, as in those journeys which I made alone and on foot.