Thoreau

This is rather random, but I just finished Walden, and although there are some boring parts, for the most part I thought the book was fascinating... it was more about the philosophies of transcendentalism than a pond, and I think the most fascinating thing of all was that he wasn't really using the pond as a metaphor of life... he was using life as a metaphor of the pond.

So there's some really good stuff in it... here's all the quotes that I wrote down that really made me think:

I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never know, and shall never know, a worse man than myself.

Not until we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.

The universe is wider than our views of it. ...there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but... it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals... than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.

A voice said to him- Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over fields other than these.- But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect.

We should be blessed if we lived int he present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us...; and did not spend our time attoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring. ...Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measure or far away.

Things do not change; we change.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is. ...However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

So, I don't really agree with what he says about how superfluous everything is, and that we really don't need houses or clothing or anything, and that we should simplify simplify simplify, but there is a lot in that book that makes a lot of sense. The conclusion was AWESOME. I think Thoreau was a bit crazy to isolate himself in some cabin (I would have been scared to death on winter nights), but I think he truly wanted to know himself, and I admire what he did, and the way he looked at the world and tried to find the meaning in everything, and tried to make so many analogies. I would have liked to know him... he seems introverted perhaps, but I think that he really understood human nature (even if I think he was off the mark on some things).

So... yeah, think about those quotes... they make you consider yourself in a different light.

Now I'm on to reading this new philosopher... I can't remember his name (sad).