Reflections at Walden

by Henry David Thoreau

Awesome Book! The best

Genres: Classics, Poetry, Philosophy

61 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, philosopher, and abolitionist who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.

In 1817, Henry David Thoreau was born in Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1837, taught briefly, then turned to writing and lecturing. Becoming a Transcendentalist and good friend of Emerson, Thoreau lived the life of simplicity he advocated in his writings. His two-year experience in a hut in Walden, on land owned by Emerson, resulted in the classic, Walden: Life in the Woods (1854). During his sojourn there, Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax in protest of slavery and the Mexican war, for which he was jailed overnight. His activist convictions were expressed in the groundbreaking On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849). In a diary he noted his disapproval of attempts to convert the Algonquins "from their own superstitions to new ones." In a journal he noted dryly that it is appropriate for a church to be the ugliest building in a village, "because it is the one in which human nature stoops to the lowest and is the most disgraced." (Cited by James A. Haught in 2000 Years of Disbelief.) When Parker Pillsbury sought to talk about religion with Thoreau as he was dying from tuberculosis, Thoreau replied: "One world at a time."

Thoreau's philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. D. 1862.

More: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tho...

http://thoreau.eserver.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Da...

http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu....

http://www.biography.com/people/henry...

Reviews

[Josephine Sciortino]

So much wisdom here.

[Clara Maine]

At times, the writing style made me feel illiterate. Not really the book's fault, as it is 179 years old and Thoreau was working with a very different education than I am, but I do think it dampened the experience. If I ever make it back to this book with a different brain I will adjust my review accordingly. My folly was going in believing I was reading philosophy or a memoir instead of nature poetry disguised as prose. At Walden, there is no plot, only Thoreau's many many observations.

I do believe he did a good thing here. There is an intrinsic value he is trying to remind us of. Nature for nature's sake. While I run around doing and not doing all my little human tasks, the forest stands, day after day, and is nothing more or less than itself. There is more than one way to be alive.

Some parts I underlined:

I pine for one to whom I can speak my first thoughts; thoughts which represent me truly, which are no better and no worse than I; thoughts which have the bloom on them, which alone can be sacred and divine.

Nature now, like an athlete, begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great antagonist Winter. In the bare trees and twigs what a display of muscle!

In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

I find in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.

And of course, the banger line that raised my expectations for this book so high the reality of it was a disappointment:

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.

[Annie]

A cute little volume of some of the essays/notes/poetry written at Walden. It was a good introduction. (An aside: I forgot I had even owned this book; I must have gotten it at a second-hand bookstore an age and a half ago, because it has a dedication to a man named George in 1972, from his sisters. It's all quite charming.)

[Sarah Bauer]

Articles, poetry, and selections from the novel were well put together and a nice quick read for if you want to get a taste of Thoreau without reading all his writings. I look forward to reading more of his work myself!

[Brandi D'Angelo]

Loved, loved, loved this book!! By the end I had flagged so many pages that I decided the entire book is a treasure chest of wisdom. I was surprised at how modern some of his musings were even in today's world. Some things really are timeless. A few favorites:

"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?"

"What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be a falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can."

"I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men."

"To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."

[Alicia Mendez]

This short collection is a good intro to Thoreau and the philosophy of transcendentalism through an early American’s perspective. While I disagree with such philosophy, Thoreau brings poetry to prose and, I think reading him is such a needed exercise of the mind for modern English speakers. This namely for the fact that the majority of what we currently speak, hear, and read on a day to day basis in the English language is prosaic and very shallow. Reflections at Walden encourages and cultivates just that: reflection.

[Adam]

A deep thinker not afraid to be alone who mistrusted the government & blazed his own trail. I'd love to have a conversation with him in his home made home near Walden Pond in the summer.

[Love]

I had only heard the name Henry David Thoreau previously & connected with prose so on getting this Xmas gift I wasn`t hopeful however this is a gem of a book with an abridged version of himself & then his wonderfully evocative time living, with nature, alone in Concord Mass. from 1845, for 2 yrs, having built his own house & lived exclusively from & off the land around. Loved this book & recommend it fully as an introduction to this most disciplined & giving of men.

[Judy]

Thoreau is one of my favorite contemplative writers. I always find new things to ponder when I re-read a work of his.

Here is the dust cover art from the original Hallmark edition in 1968: http://twitpic.com/bob1i4

[Sheila]

A short collection of a few of Thoreau's writings at Walden, his poetry, and others essays about his experiences in nature. Gives a nice overview or refresher on Thoreau, which is what I was after.

[Wanda B.]

'I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude' Henry David Thoreau