Henry David Thoreau's Walden is an uncontested American classic and Thoreau's retrospective account of self-reliance and spiritual discovery.
In response to America's rise in commercialism and industrialism, Thoreau, in 1845, leaves Concord, Massachusetts for the nearby Walden Pond where he sets up shop isolated from the community he critiques.
Over some 300 pages, Thoreau observes and comments on the balanced ways of nature and the life unattached from earthly goods. He says, "Indeed, the more you have of such things, the poorer you are."
Much like the fervent traveler, the more things one carries, the harder it is to move about carelessly. This is only one of Thoreau's musings and many such quotes have been taken from this account. As an unemployed post-grad, the idea of following one's rightful path, pursuing one's dreams and maintaining a balanced life without reliance on material 'things' hits home.
Here are some of my favorite quotes thus far:
- "In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high." (69)
- "I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely...but earnestly live it from beginning to end." (94)
- "This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet." (97)
- "I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead." (114)
- We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course." (115)
In his second major work of travel non-fiction, Paul Theroux hops on a train from Boston and ends at the end of the rail in Patagonia, southern Argentina. From the outskirt town of Laredo through Central America to the "Canal Zone" of Panama and to the Andean mountain towns of Ecuador.
(From left to right: Me, Matt and Justin trying to survive at Oktoberfest, Munich: Photo Alyssa Bricklin)
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