In a few words
Thoreau seeks solitude in the woods near Walden Pond.
(still reading)
Thoreau seeks solitude in the woods near Walden Pond.
(still reading)
"Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new."
"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determined, or rather indicates his fate."
"Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them, Their fingers, from excessive toil, are to clumsy and tremble too much for that.""The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom of fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly."
"One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels."
"There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers...it is to solve the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically."
"The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind."
~
"There are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one center."
"It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon."
"Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new."
"In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high."
"From the hearth to the field is a great distance. It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies...Birds do not sign in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots."
"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it."