Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience

Economy Where I Lived, and What I Lived For Reading Sounds Solitude Visitors The Bean Field The...

I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who...

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so...

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed...

The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the...

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of...

The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What...

I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind their own affairs...

I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the...

For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never...

In short, I went on thus for a long time, I may say it without boasting, faithfully minding my...

I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. If...

A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him...

On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has in this or any country risen...

As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life, though there are instances...

In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser...

The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than...

But how do the poor minority fare. Perhaps it will be found, that just in proportion as some have...

The very simplicity and nakedness of mans life in the primitive ages imply this advantage at least,...

Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins...

By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it, my house...

At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so...

Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my house, which were already impervious...

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense...

Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and with regard to the railroad even we...

The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land which I required, about a third of...

Yes, I did eat 8.74, all told; but I should not thus unblushingly publish my guilt, if I did not...

These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive they may appear, as they have a...

Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn,...

There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I...

As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate in his fathers day. Among...

I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the dictionary defines it, outward and...

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain ones self on this earth is...

But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen say. I confess that I have hitherto...

The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being burned at the stake, suggested new modes...

I would not subtract any thing from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand...

I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, that They asked a wise man,...

My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms, the refusal was all...

All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale, I have always cultivated a...

When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days...

This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain storm in August,...

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say...

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men;...

What news. how much more important to know what that is which was never old. Kieou he yu great...

Time is but the stream I go a fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom...

The student may read Homer or schylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness,...

Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written...

The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord...

We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century and are making the most rapid strides of any...

I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for...

The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go...

I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun,...

Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied. It is very...

Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with them, and the fishes in the pond no...

Regularly at half past seven, in one part of the summer, after the evening train had gone by, the...

I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound...

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every...

Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging...

They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in...

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best,...

I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me...

What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented. Not my or thy great grandfathers, but...

One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a...

When Winslow, afterward governor of the Plymouth Colony, went with a companion on a visit of...

He says, Thats good. He has a great bundle of white oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered...

In him the animal man chiefly was developed. In physical endurance and contentment he was cousin to...

There was a certain positive originality, however slight, to be detected in him, and I occasionally...

One real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped to forward toward the northstar. Men of one...

Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were...

Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run across the road, or the sun had got above the shrub...

On gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo like popguns to these woods, and some waifs...

It was a singular experience that long acquaintance which I cultivated with beans, what with...

This is the result of my experience in raising beans. Plant the common small white bush bean about...

Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is...

It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to launch myself into the night, especially if it...

Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I...

Sometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the family had all retired, I have returned to...

The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones like paving stones, excepting one or...

The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows,...

The pond was my well ready dug. For four months in the year its water is as cold as it is pure at...

The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. I have in my minds eye the western indented...

In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as...

An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly sixty years ago, when it was dark with surrounding...

Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its...

I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is on the one hand distantly and...

No, no; if the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest...

This pond has rarely been profaned by a boat, for there is little in it to tempt a fisherman....

Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbows arch, which filled the lower...

So the Muse fables. But therein, as I found, dwelt now John Field, an Irishman, and his wife, and...

As I was leaving the Irishmans roof after the rain, bending my steps again to the pond, my haste to...

As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark,...

There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the best...

It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination; but...

Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from his food in which appetite had no...

How happys he who hath due place assigned To his beasts and disafforested his mind. Can use this...

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely...

Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I have not heard so much as a locust over the sweet...

Hermit alone. Let me see; where was I. Methinks I was nearly in this frame of mind; the world lay...

The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said to have been introduced...

I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out to my wood pile, or...

Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud turtle in a victualling cellar, sported his heavy...

For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the...

The wasps came by thousands to my lodge in October, as to winter quarters, and settled on my...

The north wind had already begun to cool the pond, though it took many weeks of steady blowing to...

However, only one or two of my guests were ever bold enough to stay and eat a hasty pudding with...

At length the winter set in in good earnest, just as I had finished plastering, and the wind began...

Every man looks at his wood pile with a kind of affection. I love to have mine before my window,...

Hard green wood just cut, though I used but little of that, answered my purpose better than any...

Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall, Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all. Was thy...

Here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to town, Zilpha, a colored woman, had her little...

Nearer yet to town, you come to Breeds location, on the other side of the way, just on the edge of...

Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road approaches nearest to the pond, Wyman the...

Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone,...

At this season I seldom had a visitor. When the snow lay deepest no wanderer ventured near my house...

Sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when I returned from my walk at evening I crossed the deep...

A true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress. An Old Mortality, say rather an...

When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter routes to many points,...

Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a...

Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up the crumbs the squirrels had...

One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe in Walden once every year when the...

The hares Lepus Americanus were very familiar. One had her form under my house all winter,...

Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a...

Ah, the pickerel of Walden. when I see them lying on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman...

But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, we apply these proportions to Walden, which, as...

Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, were observed to have a bar quite across their...

What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. It is the law of average. Such a rule...

While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from...

Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is...

The opening of large tracts by the ice cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the...

Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the...

The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this...

Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain and in every hollow, the frost comes...

The first sparrow of spring. The year beginning with younger hope than ever. The faint silvery...

In the morning I watched the geese from the door through the mist, sailing in the middle of the...

A return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil and beneficent breath of the morning, causes...

On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of the river near the Nine Acre Corner bridge,...

Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods...

What does Africa, what does the West stand for. Is not our own interior white on the chart. black...

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several...

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense. The commonest...

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises. If a man...

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

How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make...

I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow...

But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no government men, I...

How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today. I answer that he cannot...

Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand...

It is not a mans duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the...

Unjust laws exist. shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey...

As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such...