Advance confidently in the direction of your dreams

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.

He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

– Henry David Thoreau

Source: Walden, David Henry Thoreau
Image: Nicholas Raymond (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Quote: KNOWOL (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Alexander Graham Bell in Florida: Photo from the Last Year of His Life, 1922

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45 Patriotic Quotes from Presidents of the United States

Series of 45 patriotic quotes, one from each U.S. President.

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Do good work with a willing mind

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Beautifully detailed map of Hyde Park, Massachusetts from 1879

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Historic old map of White Plains, New York from 1887

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Historical map shows bird’s eye view of Honey Grove, TX in 1886

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Ulysses S. Grant’s deathbed letter to his wife and children

With these few injunctions and the knowledge I have of your love and affection, and of the dutiful affection of all our children, I bid you a final farewell, until we meet in another and, I trust, a better world. You will find this on my person after my demise.