Thoreau............................

So, my sweetie and I are sitting in on a lecture series on Thoreau's Walden.  Our teacher is delightful and has forgotten more about Thoreau (and Emerson and Hawthorne and all that crowd) than we will ever know.  Just for starters, Thoreau's given name was David Henry not Henry David, and the last name was pronounced Tho Row.  Walden is one of those books that I sort of, but not really, read a long time ago.  It has been sitting on my shelves forever, but, until now, have had little inclination to pick it up.  Our first assignment was to read three chapters.  Turns out the Thoreau is an amazing thinker and wordsmith.  Here are a few nuggets, in no particular order, found in the first ten pages of the first chapter (Economy):

"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion."

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."

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

"I trust none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits."

"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.  Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in."

"The portionless who struggle with no unnecessary inherited encumbrances find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh."

"The finest qualities of our nature, like the blooms on fruits, can only be preserved by the most delicate handling.  Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly."

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?"

"One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels."

"Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indisposable, but positive hinderences to the elevation of mankind."

These were all from the first ten pages, and a different reader would most likely come up with a different list of equally memorable writings.