Replica of Thoreau's one-room cabin at Walden Pond

Source: Burdeau, Cain."Walden Pond provides a simply peaceful retreat" Sunday, July 13, 2003. Lawrence-Journal-World
 
 

Thoreau Quotes:

 

I learned this, at least, by my experiment;
that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

~ from the "Conclusion" to Walden

 

 

 

Live free, child of the mist,
-- and with respect to knowledge we are all
children of the mist.

~ from the essay Walking

 

 

 

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself,
than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

~ from the chapter "Economy" in Walden

 

 

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 future,
which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

~ from the chapter "Economy" in Walden

 

 

 

My Aunt Maria asked me to read the life of Dr. Chalmers,
which, however, I did not promise to do.
Yesterday, Sunday, she was heard through the partition
shouting to my Aunt Jane, who is deaf, "Think of it!
He stood half an hour today to hear the frogs croak,
and he wouldn't read the life of Chalmers."

~ from the Journal (March 28, 1853)

 

 

In the streets and in society I am almost invariably
cheap and dissipated, my life is unspeakably mean.
No amount of gold or respectability would in the least
redeem it,-- dining with the Governor or a member of Congress!!
But alone in the distant woods or fields,
in unpretending sprout-lands or pastures tracked by rabbits,
even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this,
when a villager would be thinking of his inn,
I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related,
and that cold and solitude are friends of mine.
I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent
to what others get by churchgoing and prayer.
I come home to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.
I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are,
grand and beautiful. I have told many that I walk every day
about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it.
I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America,
out of my head and be sane a part of every day.

~ from the Journal (January 7, 1857)
 
 
 

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