Short notes on "Walden"

"In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. 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."

"If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself."

"The universe is wider than our views of it."

"Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like curious passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent."

"Direct your eye sight inward, and you'll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be
Expert in home-cosmography."

"The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone,－but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion."

"She was probably the only thoroughly sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust young lady that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it was spring."

"The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him."

"Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other."

"I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers."

"Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows."

"By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent."

"If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality."

"When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,－that pretty fears and pretty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality."