Thoreau

“"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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to pracise (sic) resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shace close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to knowit by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion." - HDT”

“Yep. Good ol' HDT.”

“Thoreaus family brought him food weekly.”

“"Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them."
Henry David Thoreau (my idol)”

“"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."
Henry David Thoreau”

“Cool! I know another teacher in the English high school in the neighbouring village that owns (inherited)600 acres of orchard and mixed forest. He has a wood stove heated tree house by a stream and Thoreau on the table. My personal favourite is from 'Camping and Woodcraft' by Horace Kephart (1917). It's dedicated to Nessmuk (of superlight canoe fame) and Kephart might be quoting him: 'I don't go to the wilderness to «rough it»; I go to the wildernes to «smooth it». I get it rough enough in the city. Just thought I'd share. Happy and thoughtful trails ('The unreflective life is not worth living.')”

“Cool! I know another teacher in the English high school in the neighbouring village that owns (inherited)600 acres of orchard and mixed forest. He has a wood stove heated tree house by a stream and Thoreau on the table. My personal favourite is from 'Camping and Woodcraft' by Horace Kephart (1917). It's dedicated to Nessmuk (of superlight canoe fame) and Kephart might be quoting him: 'I don't go to the wilderness to «rough it»; I go to the wildernes to «smooth it». I get it rough enough in the city. Just thought I'd share. Happy and thoughtful trails ('The unreflective life is not worth living.')”

“Cool! I know another teacher in the English high school in the neighbouring village that owns (inherited)600 acres of orchard and mixed forest. He has a wood stove heated tree house by a stream and Thoreau on the table. My personal favourite is from 'Camping and Woodcraft' by Horace Kephart (1917). It's dedicated to Nessmuk (of superlight canoe fame) and Kephart might be quoting him: 'I don't go to the wilderness to «rough it»; I go to the wildernes to «smooth it». I get it rough enough in the city. Just thought I'd share. Happy and thoughtful trails ('The unreflective life is not worth living.')”

“Cool! I know another teacher in the English high school in the neighbouring village that owns (inherited)600 acres of orchard and mixed forest. He has a wood stove heated tree house by a stream and Thoreau on the table. My personal favourite is from 'Camping and Woodcraft' by Horace Kephart (1917). It's dedicated to Nessmuk (of superlight canoe fame) and Kephart might be quoting him: 'I don't go to the wilderness to «rough it»; I go to the wildernes to «smooth it». I get it rough enough in the city. Just thought I'd share. Happy and thoughtful trails ('The unreflective life is not worth living.')”

“You don't say!”

“pshaw!

newbies!”

“Hyperpacker,
True enough, and his 'wilderness' was only a couple of miles out of town, but the ideals he speaks of are tangible none the less.
Ideals are the seeds of dreams. We need them -because- they are out of reach.”

“Especially enjoyed his writing about racing someone to the next town, he, on foot, the other, on a train. He inspires much thought. Fell in love with Walden when I was in highschool.”

“BTW, being a "few miles out of town" was quite different then, than now.”

“Why does everyone quote the same thing from Thoreau?
Very nice website btw.
This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellow and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but his is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar.”

“I hear ya Dunadan, and no Gore-Tex then either.

My point was just that his written words are larger than the facts of his two year stay on the shore of Walden because he wrote of ideals. And that is why it is such a great book.
Many others of his day lived off the land in cabins; settled wild places. It is how he framed the experience in his writings that made the difference.”

“Daiwa,
I think that section is more often quoted because:
A) it is well known.
and
B) it is the easiest to search for to copy-n-paste :)”

“Daiwas comment reminded me of a rather long Carl Sagan quote. It references a picture taken of Earth from the edge of the solar system. Earth isn't much more than a spec in the picture.

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

“"I went to the store the other day to buy a bolt for our front door, for as I told the storekeeper, 'the governor was coming here.' 'Aye,' he said, 'and the Legislature too.' 'Then I will take two bolts,' said I. He said that there had been a steady demand for bolts and locks of late, for our protectors were coming." HDT”

“Never really enjoyed Thoreau. He struck me as arrogant and self-righteous. But I began to reread Walden again this morning. I am not sure how I feel still.”

“My favorite Thoreau quote... "In wilderness is the preservation of the world."”

“To rearrange that into an almost as apt statement: "In the world is the preservation of wilderness." What I mean by that is that there ARE somepeople out there willing to let their balls flap in the breeze for the sake of wilderness preservation. Just a thought.”

“Great quote Dayhiker.

pisqa- put some pants on afor ya catch a chill!”

“Almost apt.... Pisgah, do you have a picture of that? ;->”

“Daiwa, I can't argue with your choice of quotes, I just htink that his statement of purpose is so eloquent, and a sign that he has already realized that which he is seeking. I Iove it all, though.
I hear you, barlo. I think it is of utmost importance to remember that Thoreau was living a spiritual discipline, while experimmenting with his living circumstance. His rigorous inquiry into the nature of all phenomena was the overriding thrust of his writing. My two cents.
Hyper, I can see how you would think that. He is un-apologetic in his writing. I sense a great excitement, though. The guy was seeing each thing anew, and trying to turn us on to that way of seeiing.”

“A contrast for ya'll...

"There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living."

-Thoreau, a literary icon.

"Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one's labor in which he toils under the sun during the few of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward. .. for he will not often consider the years of his life, because God keeps him occupied with the gladness of his heart."

- King Solomon, purportedly the richest and wisest of men.”

“So I have read about half of Walden this past week. I admire the writing more but still find HDT to be a pompous sourpuss at times. Here are some quotes I like....

" I have lived some thirty years on this planet,and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose."

" This is the only way we say but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre."

"I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men."”

“I think Thoreau lived life as a poet, taking his inspiration from the trees. He lived in a time when most men took inspiration in the houses they built with the trees they cut down. Thoreau knew there was greater value in living trees rather than dead ones!

I don't have Maine Woods with me at work, but the quote that touched me the most went something like this, "occasionaly man must travel the loggers path and the indians trail to drink at some new spring of the muses... deep within the wilderness"

I butchered that one, anyone know it?”

“Emerson visiting HDT in gaol:

Emerson: What are you doing in there?

HDT: What are you doing OUT There?”

“I too, am reading Walden right now. I agree with hyperpacker's statement about his pompous attitude. I'm also not a fan of his writing style. He rambles on continuously without saying anything, grasping at empty words. I guess that's the poet in him. Most sentences are about a half a page long.”

“"So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn"

HDT "walking"

I have this one hanging on my wall....
"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 he hears,
however measured or far away"”

“Here is a great one. The context is HDT is talking too a man about buying his farm,the man thinks its legitimate but HDT is not serious. The landowner backs out and tries to offer HDT $10 for the trouble which he refuses....

"...but before the owner gave me deed of it,his wife(every man has such a wife)changed her mind and wished to keep it,he offered me ten dollars to release him."”