Walden: Or, Life in the Woods |
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Common terms and phrases
animal Baker Farm bark beans beautiful birds blackberry bottom called cellar clothes color commonly Concord Concord River dark deep distance door earth England eyes farm farmer feet fire fish Fitchburg Railroad forest Gondibert grass green ground half hand hear heard heaven hills hole hour human hunter inches Indian inhabitants John Field johnswort keep labor learned leaves live Loch Fyne log canoe look loon man's meadow merely mile morning muskrats Nature neighbors never night once perchance perhaps pickerel pine pitch-pine poor railroad rain red squirrel rods run the gantlet sand savage season seen shelter shore side snow sometimes sound spring squirrels stand stones sumachs summer surface things thought tion town traveller trees true veery village Walden Pond walk warm wigwam wild wind winter woodchuck woods
Popular passages
Page 91 - 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.
Page 82 - I AM monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute ; From the centre all round to the sea I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
Page 71 - In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.
Page 76 - There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root...
Page 51 - We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas ; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
Page 339 - I desire to speak somewhere without bounds ; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments ; for I am convinced that I cannot, exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression.
Page 238 - I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a belhun, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was...
Page 138 - Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar. ... I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who...
Page 140 - I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. 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.
Page 340 - Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises ? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.