An Entry from Henry David Thoreau

Nov 1851. It is fatal to the writer to be too much possessed by his thought. Things must lie a little remote to be described.

Write often, write upon a thousand themes, rather than long at a time, not trying to turn too many feeble somersaults in the air,–and so come down upon your head at last. Antaeus-like, be not long absent from the ground. Those sentences are good and well discharged which are like so many little resiliences from the spring floor of our life,–a distinct fruit and kernel itself, springing from terra firma. Let there be as many distinct plants as the soil and the light can sustain. Take as many bounds in a day as possible. Sentences uttered with your back to the wall. . . . Sentences in which there is no strain.

~From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau