Walden

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.

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off
the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the
rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without
perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring
and the children cry,—determined to make a day of it. Why should we
knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed
in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the
meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest
of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor,
sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the