All quotes from Thoreau’s Walden. Sometime’s I’ll just be recording phrases that stuck out to me.
1 - “a sojourner in civilized life”
2 - “addressed to poor students” - It would be interesting to read this book with liberal arts students and discuss the good life.
5 -
6 - “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” #time
6 - Famous quote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
7 - “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.”
9 - “The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?”
13 - “There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers… To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.” #good-life#good-work
15 - “In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.” #time
18 -
20 - #clothes
22 - “I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.” #clothes For some reason, this puts me in mind of Bicycle Thieves. The main character must own a bicycle to do his job. Without it, he’s unfit for work. The man by himself isn’t enough.