If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Thoreau introduces the sentence in the last chapter as what he learned “by my experiment” at Walden. It circulates online in looser forms such as “go confidently in the direction of your dreams”, which are paraphrases.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, 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.
Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
Call to mind from whence we sprang: / Ye were not form’d to live the life of brutes / But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.