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nlgeorge73's review against another edition
3.0
Reflections on living a more thoughtful life. Many wonderful quotes and philosophical insights. At times Thoreau became very condescending in his writing and the descriptive nature of life in Walden became overly tedious, but still a worthwhile read.
"Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then."
"Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then."
zaqzaqzaq's review against another edition
Unfortunate, but I just didn’t care. I’ve always heard such great things about the imagery and sense of nature in his writings, but the start of it all just reads like a bitter rambling rant of a drunk philosopher. I tried to skip ahead to some other essays and while they are more positive in tone, it still reads holier than thou and I found it unbearable.
papidoc's review against another edition
5.0
I’ve been working on Hendy David Thoreau’s Walden for some time now…a couple of years at least. Read a little, think a lot, emulate (in some ways), and think some more. It is a worthy read, and one I shall read again, and dip back into often. What follows is a collection of thoughts that stood out for me from this reading of Walden. As I look back over some of my notes and highlighted passages, I realize that there is something of a theme, a connected thread that speaks to me.
Thoreau describes his time on Walden pond thusly: “…for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher’s desk.” “Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.” “Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.” Not money, nor possessions, but a life of the heart and the mind, the inner journey and a life of service to one’s fellow beings. Material wealth offers the illusion of security, but the inward journey is what truly matters.
Thoreau understood this truth: “We should come home from far, from adventures and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character…” and as well, “If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of nations, if you would travel farther than all travelers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself.”
While I truly enjoy travel far and wide, and would do so much more often if I had the resources, it is the new knowledge, understanding, appreciation, and perspective that comes from travel that I truly value. “He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority.” “Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
As a naturalist, and a writer, Thoreau was adept at putting into words the feelings and sensations that I have often associated with nature at her best. “Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow’s arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me as if I looked through colored crystal. It was a lake, in which, for a short while, I lived like a dolphin.” What joy I find in the simple beauties of life…the glow of a red sunset, the precision of a flight of birds veeing their way south for the winter, a baby’s gurgling laugh, or the eager love of a dog when it’s master returns home. “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
Thoreau also seemed to be on good terms with Deity, and understood the real purpose of this life. “Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails…Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal (note: the natural man, as described in the Book of Mormon) is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established.”
As prophets and apostles and wise men throughout time have taught, good work is a blessing to the soul. “If you would avoid uncleanness, and all sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable.” Such work takes us out of ourselves, especially that work that serves and brings goodness into the lives of others of our Heavenly Father’s creations, and it can keep us from approaching that which is impure and unholy. “We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.”
Nonetheless, none of us are fully righteous, and all are in need of forgiveness. To forgive others teaches us that God will forgive as well, and may even give us some sense of the holy in all of us. “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 his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten.” I wonder if perhaps this is how our vision will be broadened in that great and coming day when we will come forth in the dawn of the resurrection and see each other as God our Father sees us, freshly alive, renewed, and rescued from the stains of the mortal world.
To lead a mission-driven life, then, is the ideal, but only if the mission points heavenward. “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that 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…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.”
Thoreau describes his time on Walden pond thusly: “…for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher’s desk.” “Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.” “Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.” Not money, nor possessions, but a life of the heart and the mind, the inner journey and a life of service to one’s fellow beings. Material wealth offers the illusion of security, but the inward journey is what truly matters.
Thoreau understood this truth: “We should come home from far, from adventures and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character…” and as well, “If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of nations, if you would travel farther than all travelers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself.”
While I truly enjoy travel far and wide, and would do so much more often if I had the resources, it is the new knowledge, understanding, appreciation, and perspective that comes from travel that I truly value. “He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority.” “Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
As a naturalist, and a writer, Thoreau was adept at putting into words the feelings and sensations that I have often associated with nature at her best. “Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow’s arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me as if I looked through colored crystal. It was a lake, in which, for a short while, I lived like a dolphin.” What joy I find in the simple beauties of life…the glow of a red sunset, the precision of a flight of birds veeing their way south for the winter, a baby’s gurgling laugh, or the eager love of a dog when it’s master returns home. “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
Thoreau also seemed to be on good terms with Deity, and understood the real purpose of this life. “Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails…Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal (note: the natural man, as described in the Book of Mormon) is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established.”
As prophets and apostles and wise men throughout time have taught, good work is a blessing to the soul. “If you would avoid uncleanness, and all sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable.” Such work takes us out of ourselves, especially that work that serves and brings goodness into the lives of others of our Heavenly Father’s creations, and it can keep us from approaching that which is impure and unholy. “We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.”
Nonetheless, none of us are fully righteous, and all are in need of forgiveness. To forgive others teaches us that God will forgive as well, and may even give us some sense of the holy in all of us. “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 his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten.” I wonder if perhaps this is how our vision will be broadened in that great and coming day when we will come forth in the dawn of the resurrection and see each other as God our Father sees us, freshly alive, renewed, and rescued from the stains of the mortal world.
To lead a mission-driven life, then, is the ideal, but only if the mission points heavenward. “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that 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…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.”
johnmontague's review against another edition
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
4.5
sacredblues's review against another edition
1.0
My favorite section of this collection of Henry David Thoreau’s essays was the part where it ended. I cannot stand this book and, since these are essays, I can safely say that I cannot stand the man himself. Thoreu’s writing is so dense that I had a hard time making heads or tails of what he was actually saying. It doesn’t help that the man absolutely adores his tangents. Those who do manage to follow what Thoreau is saying will be rewarded by the ramblings of a pompous asshat, who’s contrarian for the sake of just going against the grain. Everyone is worthy of his contempt. Do you like money? Do you like the hustle and bustle of the city? Do you like not growing your own meals? Do you like opulence? If you said yes to any of those, I doubt you’d enjoy reading the snobbish Henry David Thoreau. It’s so hard to engage with an argument when said debater doesn’t make an effort to invite you in. The best part of this book for me was Thoreau engaging in nature, playing with loons on Walden; when he does this, he’s truly childlike and I can appreciate his happiness. But when he actually argues I feel slapped in the face. It would help if he didn’t spout such inane, quasi-deep drivel such as, “I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.” Maybe I’m too stupid to “get” Thoreau. Maybe I’m too stubborn. Bottom line is, I did not enjoy this at all and I think I’ll have an aneurysm if I had to read another letter of Thoreau’s “writing.”
colinrafferty's review against another edition
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
emhunsber's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
3.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Xenophobia, Religious bigotry, and Animal death
Moderate: Cultural appropriation, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Colonisation, Racism, and War
Minor: Ableism, Antisemitism, Classism, Islamophobia, and Slavery
Thoreau was a man of his time; that said, he was also a privileged white man of his time. While he does not go into detail about his ideology related to non-white people, it is clear from his mentions of "Indians" and "savages" that those who do not look like him are very "other", and his romanticism of "orientals" and "hindoos" crosses into racist territory.