Solitude
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always 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 really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, 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 must be where he can :see the folks,: and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his days solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and :the blues:; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each others way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Consider the girls in a factory---never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would 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 have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray?
And yet 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 sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. god is alone---but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. I am no 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 am no 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 new house.
研究:喝咖啡对结肠癌有抑制作用
为什么美国人把秋天叫作fall?真相原来是这个!
诺贝尔文学奖:我们为何要读阿列克谢耶维奇
国际英语资讯:21 killed, over 320 injured as earthquake jolts parts of Pakistan
自拍死伤无数 俄罗斯忍无可忍发布官方指南
国际英语资讯:Johnson heads home early to face political heat after dramatic day in UK highest court
两分钟!人人都能轻松练的办公瑜伽
国际英语资讯:World leaders call for multilateral approach towards common challenges
孩子更亲近他妈妈 怎么办?
外媒:给跪了!衡水中学生手写英文堪比印刷
改变你人生的11条普世真理
日本新兴三大狗血职业:踢人屁股也赚钱!
世界TOP500最佳旅行圣地:长城排第四
国际英语资讯:South Korean president proposes turning DMZ into intl peace zone
万万没想到:睡眠不足你会变得多糟
电子烟频繁引发事故,老外又开始抽老式香烟了……
国内英语资讯:Chinese official attends 70th anniversary commemoration of Geneva Conventions
小心!时髦打扮会影响你的身体健康!
美到没朋友:日本梦幻池塘 美如莫奈画作
国际英语资讯:General Debate of UN General Assembly opens