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)
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Some of my favorites (you know, just to add to you list of good ones )
ReplyDelete- Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.
- There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but no philosophers. Yet is it admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live.
- The greater part of my what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of any thing, it is very likely to be my good behavior.
- Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance... till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake.
I could benefit from some time at Walden, I think.
Yea! I definitely needed some Walden right now. It's a great book to sit back and think.
ReplyDeleteMy new favorites:
"Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make believe" (376)
"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." (372)