My life has been the poem

My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.

Henry David Thoreau

(Picture: Acrylic on canvas, Sam Francis)

I will breathe after my own fashion

Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior will or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience


(Picture: Portrait of Henry David Thoreau, Felix Vallotton)