Thoreau's Ecstasy

"My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before, a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. It is the lighting up of the mists by the sun. Man cannot Know in any higher sense than this, any more than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the sun."

~ Henry David Thoreau, "Walking," The Writings of HDT

Photo: Robert Kruh