A Few Gems

Thoreau's Walden is my favouritest book ever (yes, I know it should be "most favourite", but meh). Recently I downloaded and read another book by him, called Walking, which is just brilliant. Its like a long essay - there is only one chapter, but its long enough to be worthy of publication as a book in its own regard, as has happened already, and cheap copies abound on amazon. In a nutshell, it is an ode to wildness in nature, as well as in gentle (or not) opposition to civilisation and culture.

The following are just a few quotes from the book itself. All of them, it seemed to me, had some profound wisdom that merited re-reading and reflecting upon. Enjoy.

*****

If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again—if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man—then you are ready for a walk.

*****

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!

*****

A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself—and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.

*****

Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery, is meeting the horse and the ox halfway.

*****

I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society. Undoubtedly, all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization; and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited disposition, this is no reason why the others should have their natures broken that they may be reduced to the same level.

*****

Some travelers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was his fame; and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.

*****

...for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge.

*****

We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.

*****

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.

[END]
EDIT: Upon reflection, I don't know if I could do the same for Walden, or for Emerson's Essays. I'd probably end up posting the whole lot verbatim, for it seems to me that every other line in those two have some profound insight worth reflecting on. I can only but recommend each wholeheartedly.