Walden, or Life in the Woods

by Henry David Thoreau

I took almost three rolls of film when we visited Walden as a class.

If you are interested in viewing some of them, click here.

Or, for some writing (most of it is in my scrapbook), click here.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."

"Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."

"Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?"

"...stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment."

"All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be."

"In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high."

"Every child begins the world again."

"The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature."

"I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end."

"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, and end which it was already but too easy to arrive at."

"...to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial."

"The man who goes alone can start to-day; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off."

"I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself."

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things that he can afford to let alone."

"The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth every where."

"'There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon,' said Damodara."

"To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake... We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep."

"Our life is frittered away by detail."

"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?"

"We think that that is which appears to be."

"In eternity there is something true and sublime."

The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us."

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in."

"In dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident."

"A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself."

"Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour."

"The air is full of invisible bolts. Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then."

"Our horizon is never quite at our elbows."

"I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself."

"Nature... an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me... I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me."

"This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space."

"Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being."

"I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it; and that is no more I than it is you."

"A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will."

"...I was filled with an inexpressible confidence, and pursued my labor cheerfully with a calm trust in the future."

"Not till we are lost... not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."

"Sky water. It needs no fence."

"A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air."

"Give me the povery that enjoys true wealth."

"Grow wild according to thy nature."

"No man ever followed his genius till it misled him."

"The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality."

"Our whole life is startlingly moral."

"Goodness is the only investment that never fails."

"We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers."

"...to some extent, our very life is our disgrace."

"There never is but one opportunity of a kind."

"You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns."

"...what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do."

"I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast."

"You can always see a face in the fire."

"But history must not yet tell the tragedies enacted here; let time intervene in some measure to assuage and lend an asure tint to them."

"Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, who gardens cemetaries."

"I encountered many a blustering and nipping wind, for nowhere has it freer play..."

"A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business call shim out at all hours, even when doctors sleep."

"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."

"While men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless."

"The amount of it is, the imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes."

"We know that a hill is not highest at its narrowest part."

"Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater numbers of seemingly confliting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful."

"It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the brights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them."

"I shall look from the same window on the pure sea-green Walden water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees, and sending up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces will appear that a man has ever stood there."

"I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous sate of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions."

"The whole tree itself is but one leaf..."

"What is man but a mass of thawing clay?"

"The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history... but living poetry... -- not a fossil earth, but a living eartth..."

"So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity."

"We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring."

"We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets."

"The universe is wider than our views of it."

"They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay."

"It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being..."

"...if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal lwas will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. 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."

"The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures."

"The purity men love is like the mists which envelop the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond."

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises?"

"We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality."

"For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through and infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly different to get out... Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe."

"Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change."

"The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."