I need to get me some Thoreau (right after I finish watching The Good Wife)

Every once in a while someone leaves a comment that I feel bears repeating (when I write "bears repeating" I have an image of a bunch of bears doing the same thing over and over again). 
This comment comes from Don Long, and I thank him for it.

What do you do? The best you can. (I have several lengthy responses I could use, but I'm not feeling particularly 'holier-than-thou' at the moment, so I'll let 'em slide.) The original Cosmos, with Carl Sagan, evoked feelings of peace and awe in me, amazed that humankind even existed, and raised hopes that someday we would discover we are not alone in the universe. And it had wicked theme music. To this day I'm still trying to get my head around the Big Bang and the multi-dimensional universe concept, but I'll leave that to smarter folk than I to work out. In the meantime, Thoreau comes to mind:

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. . . . A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that 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. . . . 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."