Henry David Thoreau

There is the calmness of the lake where there is not a breath of wind.

So it is with us.

Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily as we never were before in our lives.

Not by an opiate,

but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal.

And without an effort, our depths are revealed to ourselves.

All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps.

Such clarity.

Silence is the communion of a conscious soul with itself.

If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity, then and there is silence.

She's audible to all.

at all times, in all places.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

The millions are awake enough for physical labor, but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion.

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 expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our sound of sleep.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.