Written: [My Room] 5.00am 20th April

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be myserious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because we must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the seacoast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

Pg.205 Henry David Thoreau - Walden

Very simple, very obvious, very true and very well written. Adventure tourism lives on, as does our quest for beauty, but beauty can be found everywhere, not just in nature. From the bazaars of old Cairo, to the warrens of Barcelona's Barri Goti. From the metropolish of Tokyo to the serenity of Turkey's Blue Mosque. From the sophisticated Melburnian cofee culture to the relaxed Bahraini way of conversation, hospitality and family. Beauty can be found everywhere.

Direct your eyesight inward, and you'll find
A thousand regions in your mind
yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be
Expert in home-cosmography"

Pg. 207 Henry David Thoreau - Walden

I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundations of a true expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly forever?

Pg. 209 Henry David Thoreau - Walden

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life poor as it is. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brigthly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contendly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

Pg. 211 Henry David Thoreau - Walden