Walden or Life in the Woods

by Henry David Thoreau

have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea!

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.

An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable.

Some of my friends spoke as if I was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself. The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light, and with a lamp lengthen out the day. Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the

fine arts.

The next winter I used a small cooking-stove for economy, since I did not own the forest; but it did not keep fire so well as the open fireplace.

the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful.

Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.

There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. His manners were truly regal. I should have done better had I called on him.

The sun is but a morning star.