dual personalities

Feb. 3, 1859 “The writer must to some extent inspire himself. Most of his sentences may at first lie dead in his essay, but when all are arranged, some life and color will be reflected on them from the mature and successful lines; they will appear to pulsate with fresh life, and he will be enabled to eke out their slumbering sense, and make them worthy of the neighborhood.”

Feb. 20, 1859 “How much the writer lives and endures in coming before the public so often! A few years or books are with him equal to a long life of experience, suffering, etc. It is well if he does not become hardened. He learns how to bear contempt and to despise himself. He makes, as it were, post-mortem examination of himself before he is dead. Such is art.”

–H.D. Thoreau, A Writer’s Journal

I wonder what old Thoreau would have thought of blogging? I think it would have suited him, don’t you? A laptop in a little cabin in the woods.