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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 3/7/2009
Posts: 31,833
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Location: Inside Farlex computers
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 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 (1817-1862)
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 3/26/2013
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Location: Minsk, Minskaya Voblasts', Belarus
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All true castles must begin its existence in the air. Perhaps that's the only way...
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Location: Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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He sounds like one of those modern motivational speakers.
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Rank: Member
Joined: 3/28/2014
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Location: Urbana, Illinois, United States
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Cheesy
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 6/23/2011
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Location: Orillia, Ontario, Canada
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Yes, dream. Make sure though, that you'll be able to support the dream
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 12/26/2010
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Location: Hebron, Connecticut, United States
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I love this quote from Thoreau--it touches me somewhere deep and unidentified--the mysterious in we humans. If I could put a foundation to one of my heaven I will have create meaning in my life.
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 5/14/2010
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Your foundations must consistently be in the air too.
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 10/3/2012
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Daemon wrote: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 (1817-1862) From "Walden", Chapter 18 Conclusion, Paragraph 5 : ""[5] 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. "" And the foundation? Perhaps in Paragraph 13: : ""[13] However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is....""
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 2/18/2013
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Location: San Salvador, San Salvador, El Salvador
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In Latin America, where I'm from, people dream.
One might have a castle or two in the air.
People use the expression "to build castles in the air"
when what we want is unreachable.
Many dreams are somewhat alike:
money, material goods, respect from others or admiration, power, etc.
For a boy in Africa, India or in a fabela, it might be quite high in the air.
But if you read Walden, and lost something of yourself on reading it,
you know these are not the castles in the air of which Thoreau speaks of.
Some castles in the air are not unreachable.
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Rank: Member
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Like this quote.
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Rank: Newbie
Joined: 3/28/2014
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Lofty ideals require a solid foundation to come to fruition, otherwise they will remain only dreams of what could be.
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Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 10/3/2012
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In keeping with the spirit of Thoreau's Walden experiment, perhaps it is worth stressing his conclusion: "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."
But it is the quality of the dreams that makes the confident advancement in their direction worth their salt, so to speak. There are "castles in the air" which may never rise to that quality,
nor do they deserve foundations. Winning the lottery and making the quick buck for instance.
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Rank: Newbie
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Location: Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
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[quo Thanks friend, you have expressed it so lucidly
te=curmudgeonine]Yes, dream. Make sure though, that you'll be able to support the dream[/quote]
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Rank: Member
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Location: Cairo, Al Qahirah, Egypt
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I THINK IT MEANS THAT ONE SHOULD EXERT EFFORT IN ALMOST EVERY THING TO DO IT JUST ALRIGHT.
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