Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.
Henry David Thoreau • Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
It would have suggested many things to a philosopher to have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared to know nothing of things in general; yet I sometimes saw in him a man whom I had not seen before, and I did not know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him of a fine poetic consciousness
... See moreHenry David Thoreau • Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
Perhaps this is the best way to live. What a man and what a well earned and mirthful existence
The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course à la mode.
Henry David Thoreau • Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, recreating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how it is exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless
... See moreHenry David Thoreau • Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.
Henry David Thoreau • Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day
... See moreHenry David Thoreau • Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
Think about this in the modern ckntext. We slave away and earn our 90cents just so we can take the road and back. But if we exchanged all that for walking the distance, our lives would perhaps be enriched. How often do we end up doing just this ? Working for a wage so we can spend it on a goal or product inatead of an experience.
There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.
Henry David Thoreau • Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
But no: I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him.
Henry David Thoreau • Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
Lovely way of describing it
We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women.