A little knowledge...

I've been looking up quotes that sometimes run through my head in order to identify the source and test the veracity of these quotes. I may do a weekly series on these quotes. Here's the first one:

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. – quoted on a motivational poster

Source: “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. 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. Walden. “Conclusion.” Ed. J. Lyndon Shanley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. 323-324.

The intent of the quote is clearly inspirational, and I find myself wanting to agree that if one does go confidently in the direction of one's dreams, one will be successful. Still, I wonder if the original context of the quote gets lost when the grammar is changed. The "if" of the original statement implies that there is more to it than simply being confident. The rest of the quote also suggests that there is a spiritual awakening of sorts -- an awakening of the spirit -- that accompanies following one's dreams. Knowing the substance of Thoreau's experiment, too, in which he "lived deliberately" in a house on a pond, closely observing the world around him at times, and living a life of almost isolation, puts more of a daunting challenge to readers than the motivational poster would have us believe. Thoreau isn't saying that we should all model him and become hermits, but his "experiment" is a thought experiment that requires new ways of looking at the world, rather than simply following one's dreams.