Walden

So, after putting Thoreau's work off for so long, by suggestion of Levi, I finally started reading Walden and realized how much I relate to him. I might not be as extreme as he is, but, for the most part, I tend to agree with a lot of the things he says.

Here are some quotes I found interesting:

"I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever
circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not;
-- but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly
complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they
might improve them. There are some who complain most energetically
and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their
duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most
terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but
know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their
own golden or silver fetters."

"There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not
philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once
admirable to live. "

"We worship not the Graces,
nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with
full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap,
and all the monkeys in America do the same."

"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 neighbors have. "

"Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but
follows religiously the new."

"I would rather sit on a
pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet
cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free
circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion
train and breathe a malaria all the way."