Be a Columbus of the mind!

I sometimes I trip over things on the web, often quotes, that take my breath away. It just happened again with this quote from Henry David Thoreau from his book Walden.

Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay.

Wow! I wish I had that way with words.