Saturday 14 May 2011

I locate it wholesome to be alone the higher portion of the time

I locate it wholesome to be alone the higher portion of the time. To be in company, even with the very best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I really like to be alone. I by no means found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for probably the most component a lot more lonely when we go abroad amongst men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is usually alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The truly diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish within the desert. The farmer can function alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not really feel lonesome, simply because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but need to be where he can see the folks and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone inside the home all night and most of the day without having ennui as well as the blues; but he does not understand that the student, though inside the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the very same recreation and society that the latter does, though it might be a far more condensed form of it.

Society is
generally too low-cost. We meet at very brief intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for one another. We meet at meals three times each day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a particular set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to create this frequent meeting tolerable and that we want not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every single night; we live thick and are in every other's way, and stumble over one one more, and I think that we therefore lose some respect for one an additional. Surely less frequency would suffice for all essential and hearty communications. Think about the girls in a factory---never alone, hardly in their dreams. It could be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.
I've a fantastic deal of business in my house; particularly in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest several comparisons, that some one might convey an idea of my situation. I am no far more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What organization has that lonely lake, I pray?

And
however it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there often appear to be two, but 1 can be a mock sun. god is alone---but the devil, he is far from becoming alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. I am no far more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I'm no a lot more lonely than the Millbrook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a brand new home.

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