Walden (1854), Henry David Thoreau

I put no manure on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it all once.

What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

But for my part, I preferred the solitary dwelling.

A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands.

All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe.

I believe that all races at some seasons wear something equivalent to the shirt.

We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter.

Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary.

The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another.

Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?

In this course which our ancestors took there was a show of prudence at least, as if their principle were to satisfy the more pressing wants first.

I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain; but before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms.

If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.

With this more substantial shelter about me, I had made some progress toward settling in the world.

I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame.

Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.

With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike.

In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.

Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.

Incessant labor with my hands, at first, for I had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more study impossible.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here.

We need to be provoked, -- goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot.

Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected.

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert.

What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

If we were always indeed getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.

I tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though they were scarcely palatable.

I confess, that practically speaking, when I have learned a man's real disposition, I have no hopes of changing it for the better or worse in this state of existence.

"How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of Heaven and of Earth!"

I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so that you would have said there was a deficiency of domestic sounds; neither the churn, nor the spinning wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor children crying, to comfort one.

As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me.

Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled.

While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.

I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life.

Confucius says truly, "Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors."

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.

The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.

These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.

Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them.

As the conversation began to assume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wall in opposite corners, and then commonly there was not room enough.

When I approached him he would suspend his work, and with half-suppressed mirth lie along the trunk of a pine which he had felled, and, peeling off the inner bark, roll it up into a ball and chew it while he laughed and talked.

I have rarely met a fellow-man on such promising ground, -- it was so simple and sincere and so true all that he said.

He was so simply and naturally humble -- if he can be called humble who never aspires -- that humility was no distinct quality in him, nor could he conceive of it.

He could defend many institutions better than any philosopher, because, in describing them as they concerned him, he gave the true reason for their prevalence, and speculation had not suggested to him any other.

Far off as I lived, I was not exempted from that annual visitation which occurs, methinks, about the first of April, when every body is on the move; and I had my share of good luck, though there were some curious specimens among my visitors.

Half-witted men from the almshouse and elsewhere came to see me; but I endeavored to make them exercise all the wit they had, and make their confessions to me; in such cases making wit the theme of our conversation; and so was compensated.

When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop.

These martial strains seemed as far away as Palestine, and reminded me of a march of crusaders in the horizon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous motion of the elm-tree tops which overhang the village.

I was determined to know beans.

I said to myself, I will not plant beans and corn with so much industry another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if they will not grow in this soil, even with less toil and manurance, and sustain me, for surely it has not been exhausted for these crops.

We should never cheat and insult and banish one another by our meanness, if there were present the kernel of worth and friendliness.

By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives.

We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our cultivated fields and on the prairies and forests without distinction.

The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also.

I was never cast away nor distressed in any weather, though I encountered some severe storms.

I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown.

As long as Eternal Justice reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither from the country's hills.

The surrounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the height of forty to eighty feet, though on the south-east and east they attain to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet respectively, within a quarter and a third of a mile.

The sea, however, is said to be blue one day and green another without any perceptible change in the atmosphere.

It has been conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore.

If the name was not derived from that of some English locality, -- Saffron Walden, for instance, -- one might suppose that it was called, originally, Walled-in Pond.

Nevertheless, this pond is not very fertile in fish.

You can even detect a water-bug (Gyrinus) ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface a quarter of a mile off; for they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicuous ripple bounded by two diverging lines, but the skaters glide over it without rippling it perceptibly.

Over this great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again.

The hills which form its shores are so steep, and the woods on them were then so high, that, as you looked down from the west end, it had the appearance of an amphitheatre for some kind of sylvan spectacle.

If by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity, who would not regret that the comparatively impure waters of Flints' Pond should be mingled with it, or itself should ever go to waste its sweetness in the ocean wave?

The birds with their plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature?

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

I set out one afternoon to go a-fishing to Fair-Haven, through the woods, to eke out my scanty fare of vegetables.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.

We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character.

Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me.

I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both.

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.

"That in which men differ from brute beasts," says Mencius, "is a thing very inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully."

I have actually fished from the same kind of necessity that the first fishers did.

It appeared more beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects; and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination.

I have been surprised to consider that the only obvious employment, except wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or the like business, which ever to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a whole half day any of my fellow-citizens, whether fathers or children of the town, with just one exception, was fishing.

They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience.

But I see that if I were to live in a wilderness I should again be tempted to become a fisher and hunter in earnest.

The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct.

It may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to flesh and fat.

If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies.

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, -- that is your success.

Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity?

Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion.

The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us.

Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.

If you would be chaste, you must be temperate.

From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality.

Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

In October I went a-graping to the river meadows, and loaded myself with clusters more precious for their beauty and fragrance than for food.

There too I admired, though I did not gather, the cranberries, small waxen gems, pendants of the meadow grass, pearly and red, which the farmer plucks with an ugly rake, leaving the smooth meadow in a snarl, heedlessly measuring them by the bushel and the dollar only, and sells the spoils of the meads to Boston and New York; destined to be jammed, to satisfy the tastes of lovers of Nature there.

Cooking was then, for the most part, no longer a poetic, but merely a chemic process.

It was very exciting at that season to roam the then boundless chestnut woods of Lincoln, -- they now sleep their long sleep under the railroad, -- with a bag on my shoulder, and a stick to open burrs with in my hand, for I did not always wait for the frost, amid the rustling of leaves and the loud reproofs of the red-squirrels and the jays, whose half-consumed nuts I sometimes stole, for the burrs which they had selected were sure to contain sound ones.

These trees were alive and apparently flourishing at mid-summer, and many of them had grown a foot, though completely girdled; but after another winter such were without exception dead.

And gradually from week to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake.

The chimney is to some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground and rising through the house to the heavens; even after the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent.

I brought over some whiter and cleaner sand for this purpose from the opposite shore of the pond in a boat, a sort of conveyance which would have tempted me to go much farther if necessary.

I am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I occupy.

Night after night the geese came lumbering in in the dark with a clangor and a whistling of wings, even after the ground was covered with snow, some to alight in Walden, and some flying low over the woods toward Fair Haven, bound for Mexico.

Mechanics and tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no other errand, are sure to attend the wood auction, and even pay a high price for the privilege of gleaning after the wood-chopper.

The elements, however, abetted me in making a path through the deepest snow in the woods, for when I had once gone through the wind blew the oak leaves into my tracks, where they lodged, and by absorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow, and so not only made a dry bed for my feet, but in the night their dark line was my guide.

Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road approaches nearest to the pond, Wyman the potter squatted, and furnished his townsmen with earthen ware, and left descendants to succeed him.

Neither were they rich in worldly goods, holding the land by sufferance while they lived; and there often the sheriff came in vain to collect the taxes, and "attached a chip," for form's sake, as I have read in his accounts, there being nothing else that he could lay his hands on.

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

In the deepest snows, the path which I used from the highway to my house, about half a mile long, might have been represented by a meandering dotted line, with wide intervals between the dots.

Yet I rarely failed to find, even in mid-winter, some warm and springy swamp where the grass and the skunk-cabbage still put forth with perennial verdure, and some hardier bird occasionally awaited the return of spring.

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.

We made that small house ring with boisterous mirth and resound with the murmur of much sober talk, making amends then to Walden vale for the long silences.

For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me at last, though I never saw the bird while it was making it.

Who knows but if our instruments were delicate enough we might detect an undulation in the crust of the earth?

At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes met with hounds in my path prowling about the woods, which would skulk out of my way, as if afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till I had passed.

I took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over the snow crust, straightening its body and its limbs into graceful length, and soon put the forest between me and itself, -- the wild free venison, asserting its vigor and the dignity of Nature.

They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground, -- and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged.

It is surprising that they are caught here, -- that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims.

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

When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, it is beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like a spider's web, what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the channels worn by the water flowing from all sides to a centre.

While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to cool his summer drink; impressively, even pathetically wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January, -- wearing a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not provided for.

As I saw no manure, I judged that they meant to skim the land, as I had done, thinking the soil was deep and had lain fallow long enough.

The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.

It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature.

A severe cold of a few days' duration in March may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly.

The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale.

I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters.

I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters.

Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes.

Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of currents, and half way that of vegetation.

When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, but in the morning the streams will start once more and branch and branch again into a myriad of others.

Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer.

Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy.

Suddenly an influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain.

It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed.

The tenant of the air, it seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some time in the crevice of a crag; -- or was its native nest made in the angle of a cloud, woven of the rainbow's trimmings and the sunset sky, and lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth?

Compassion is a very untenable ground.

The migrating buffalo, which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cow-yard fence, and runs after her calf, in milking time.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names.

The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring.

I delight to come to my bearings, -- not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may, -- not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by.

Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on the surface.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness.