Living in Harmony with the Nature: Henry David Thoreau's Edition (13 Titles in One Edition). Генри Дэвид Торо

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      “No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instep as the beech.”

      “How did these beautiful rainbow-tints get into the shell of the fresh-water clam, buried in the mud at the bottom of our dark river?”

      “Hard are the times when the infant’s shoes are second-foot.”

      “We are strictly confined to our men to whom we give liberty.”

      “Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.”

      “Of what significance the things you can forget? A little thought is sexton to all the world.”

      “How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of character?”

      “Only he can be trusted with gifts who can present a face of bronze to expectations.”

      “I ask to be melted. You can only ask of the metals that they be tender to the fire that melts them. To nought else can they be tender.”

      There is a flower known to botanists, one of the same genus with our summer plant called “Life-Everlasting,” a Gnaphalium like that, which grows on the most inaccessible cliffs of the Tyrolese mountains, where the chamois dare hardly venture, and which the hunter, tempted by its beauty, and by his love, (for it is immensely valued by the Swiss maidens,) climbs the cliffs to gather, and is sometimes found dead at the foot, with the flower in his hand. It is called by botanists the Gnaphalium leontopodium, but by the Swiss Edelweisse, which signifies Noble Purity. Thoreau seemed to me living in the hope to gather this plant, which belonged to him of right. The scale on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity, and we were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. It seems an injury that he should leave in the midst his broken task, which none else can finish, — a kind of indignity to so noble a soul, that it should depart out of Nature before yet he has been really shown to his peers for what he is. But he, at least, is content. His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.

      Books

       Table of Contents

      Walden (Life in the Woods)

       Table of Contents

Table of Contents

       Economy

       Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

       Reading

       Sounds

       Solitude

       Visitors

       The Bean–Field

       The Village

       The Ponds

       Baker Farm

       Higher Laws

       Brute Neighbors

       House–Warming

       Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors

       Winter Animals

       The Pond in Winter

       Spring

       Conclusion

      Economy

       Table of Contents

      When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.

      I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

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