... men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before adam and after the last man. in eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. but all these times and places and occasions are now and here. god himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. and we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. the universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. let us spend our lives in conceiving then. the poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it. (...)
time is but the stream i go a-fishing in. i drink at it; but while i drink i see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. i would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. i cannot count one. i know not the first letter of the alphabet. i have always been regretting that i was not as wise as the day i was born. the intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. i do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. my head is hands and feet. i feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. my instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it i would mine and burrow my way through these hills. i think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors i judge; and here i will begin to mine.
h. d. thoreau. de walden, 1845
