“In short, you’ve got to carry on two farms at once,—the farm on the earth and the farm in your mind.”
“It is easy enough to maintain a family, or a state, but it is hard to maintain these children of your brain (or say, rather, these guests that trust to enjoy your hospitality), they make such great demands; and yet, he who does only the former, and loses the power to think originally, or as only he ever can, fails miserably. Keep up the fires of thought, and all will go well.”
References
Thoreau’s letter to H.G.O Blake, 26 September 1859