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What a beautiful meditation on nature and simple living!

It's been about 25 years since I picked up Thoreau, and paging through Walden this time I realized I had never read the entire book before. Instead, I had only read excerpts that were included in a literature anthology. While a lot of this book's famous quotes come from early chapters, to fully appreciate Walden you need to read the whole text. Besides his thoughts about trying to live a more meaningful and deliberate life, there are some beautiful descriptions of the woods where he lived, and the reader really gets a sense of what life was like near Walden pond back in 1845. (The book wasn't published until 1854, but Thoreau's experiment started years earlier.)

"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 practise 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 shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."

I've been interested in simplicity and mindfulness for years now, and it felt good to revisit this seminal work. While reading, I was struck by how relevant Thoreau's themes were, despite having been written before the American Civil War. For example, he mentions his concern that so many clothes are being made by factories and the problem of underpaid workers and overpaid corporate bosses -- still a problem today. He talks about people relying too much on meat for their meals-- still a problem, and a habit that isn't environmentally sustainable.

Most importantly, Thoreau meditates on how people fritter away their lives on pursuits that aren't meaningful -- definitely still a problem, and now it's magnified a hundredfold thanks to the easy distraction of smartphones. The modern Thoreau might write, "I put away my phone because I wanted to live deliberately; I didn't want to live my life through a screen."

I read a gorgeous edition of this book that included photographs of Walden Woods by Scot Miller. Seeing the beautiful pictures added a sense of place to my reading, and made it even more meaningful. I highly recommended Walden to anyone interested in mindfulness, simplicity or nature writing.

Favorite Quotes
[from the Introduction by Edward O. Wilson] "Wildness is precious because it persists independently of humanity; it fulfills us but does not need us, and all we can do is choose whether to preserve it or destroy it. Nature is a refuge and an anchor, not an alien world, because it is the birthplace and cradle of the human species."

"I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of."

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

"It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof."

"Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrences to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor."

"I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."

"I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which mean may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched."

"And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him."

"There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? ... Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter?"

"In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely."

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep."

"Our life is frittered away by detail ... Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!"

"I am sure I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter -- we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea."

"Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry -- determined to make a day of it."

"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."

"A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself."

"I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end ... Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour."

"What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another."

"Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other ... We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war."

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

"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. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself."

"Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice."

"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."

"Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness."

"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."

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board."