98 
WALDEN. 
tion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine 
life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet 
met a man who was quite awake. How could I have 
looked him in the face ? 
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves 
awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expec¬ 
tation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our 
soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact 
than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his 
life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able 
to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so 
to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glori¬ 
ous to carve and paint the very atmosphere and me¬ 
dium through which we look, which morally we can do. 
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of 
arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its 
details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated 
and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, 
such paltry information as we get, the oracles would dis¬ 
tinctly inform us how this might be done. 
I went to the woods because I wished to live de¬ 
liberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and 
see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, 
when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I 
did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; 
nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite 
necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the 
marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to 
put to rout ail that was not life, to cut a broad swath and 
shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to 
its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then 
to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish 
its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to 
