I’m reading Thoreau’s Walden right now. Quite often I stop and marvel at his one-liners, such as:
“Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbours have”.
“… instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them”.
“I say, beware of all enterprises that requires new clothes”.
It’s like reading my own thoughts from my teenage years, but beautifully expressed by an Harvard-educated American over 100 years ago.
I have this weird hesitation for continuing reading the book… I’ll either be disappointed that it won’t live up to my expectations, or it will make me a hippie again.
Chances are it will make you a hipppie again.
“There is no glory so bright but the veil of business can hide it effectually. With most men life is postponed to some trivial business…
“Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these.”
“We seem to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.”
“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.”
But the actor and former schooner captain Sterling Hayden was even more seditious when he wrote in his book Wanderer…
“‘I’ve always wanted to sail to the South Seas so many men say, but I can’t afford it.’ What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of ’security.’ And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine–and before we know it our lives are gone.
“What does a man need–really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in–and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all–in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.
“The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it the tomb is sealed.”
Hi Nils, thanks for comment on my blog, it has moved to http://www.teamhoffstedt.se. If you like I’d appreciate your comment there as well. Always nice with comments. Sweet that you’re a fan of Walden as well. It has been in my shelf for 15 years but I haven’t started it yet. Now I got inspired again.