Goodness is the only investment that never
fails."
His insistence on the necessity of a moral basis for a happy life is a
characteristic that he shared in common with the great authors of the New
England group, but he had his own individual way of impressing this truth.
He thought life too earnest a quest to tolerate the frivolous or the
dilettante, and he issued his famous warning that no one can "kill time
without injuring eternity." His aim in studying nature was not so much
scientific discovery as the revelation of nature's joyous moral message to
the spiritual life of man. He may have been unable to distinguish between
the song of the wood thrush and the hermit thrush. To him the most
important fact was that the thrush is a rare poet, singing of "the immortal
wealth and vigor that is in the forest." "The thrush sings," says Thoreau,
in his _Journal_, "to make men take higher and truer views of things."
The sterling honesty and directness of Thoreau's character are reflected in
his style. He says, "The one great rule of composition--and if I were a
professor of rhetoric I should insist on this--is to _speak the truth_."
This was his aim in presenting the results of the experience of his soul,
as well as of his senses.
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