Summary of Henry David Thoreau's Walden

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I, Henry David Thoreau, lived alone in the woods for two years and two months. I now live a sojourner in civilized life again. I have been asked many questions about my lifestyle, and I will answer some of them in this book.
#2 I have traveled a lot, and I have seen how the citizens of Concord are doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. I have met many people who have inherited farms, houses, and cattle, and who are doing little else but work. They have no time to be angry.
#3 Men, even in America, are so busy with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that they cannot enjoy the finer fruits of life. Their fingers are too clumsy and they are too busy to handle them delicately.
#4 It is hard to have a southern overseer, and worse to have a northern one. However, it is worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

Sujets

• Biographical

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 04 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669348924
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Henry David Thoreau's Walden
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16 Insights from Chapter 17
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I, Henry David Thoreau, lived alone in the woods for two years and two months. I now live a sojourner in civilized life again. I have been asked many questions about my lifestyle, and I will answer some of them in this book.

#2

I have traveled a lot, and I have seen how the citizens of Concord are doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. I have met many people who have inherited farms, houses, and cattle, and who are doing little else but work. They have no time to be angry.

#3

Men, even in America, are so busy with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that they cannot enjoy the finer fruits of life. Their fingers are too clumsy and they are too busy to handle them delicately.

#4

It is hard to have a southern overseer, and worse to have a northern one. However, it is worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

#5

When we consider what is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it seems as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. But they honestly believe that there is no choice left.

#6

We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests. For instance, the same sun that ripens my beans also illuminates a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this, it would have prevented some mistakes.

#7

The four necessities of life are food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. None of these can be obtained without the others. Food is the most important of the four, because it is what sustains us. Shelter and clothing retain our heat, and fuel is what keeps our bodies burning.

#8

The grand necessity for our bodies is to keep warm, and the best way to do that is to keep busy. The luxuries and comforts of life are not necessary, and in fact, they are quite possibly hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

#9

I would like to spend my life improving the nick of time, and notching it on my stick. I would like to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment. I would like to toe that line.

#10

I have been a reporter, a weather inspector, and a herdsman. I have cared for the wild stock of the town, which can be a lot of work. My townsmen have not allowed me to become a town official, and my position has become a sinecure.

#11

I had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them.

#12

If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then a small counting house on the coast will be sufficient. You will export such items as the country provides, purely native products.

#13

The importance of clothing is to retain the vital heat, and in a society like ours, where people are often naked, clothing is also used to cover nakedness.

#14

All men need is something to do, and something to be. If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. While one thick garment is equivalent to three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices that suit customers, a thick coat can be bought for five dollars that will last as many years as three thin coats.

#15

The fashion of dressing has not risen to the level of an art. Men make do with what they can get, and women laugh at men’s costumes. Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows blindly the new.

#16

The factory system is the worst mode of clothing production. It is not well-suited for the conditions in which people live, and it does not provide them with the necessary clothes. The conditions in which people live are becoming more and more like those in England, and this cannot be blamed on the corporations.

#17

The Indians living in the Massachusetts Colony had advanced so far as to build houses out of thin cotton cloth, which they could take down and put up in a few hours. They also had carpets and utensils.

#18

In the modern world, only a small fraction of families own a shelter. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment that is necessary in summer and winter, which helps to keep them poor.

#19

The farmer is trying to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complex than the problem itself. He buys herds of cattle and uses them to produce his shoes. He is poor because he has spent all of his money on buying his farm, which he then has to pay off with interest.

#20

The majority of people are able to own or hire the modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has improved our houses, it has not improved the men who are to live in them. It has created palaces but not nobles.

#21

The poor minority fare just as poorly as the poor majority. The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. The myriads who built the pyramids were not decently buried.