More Walden

So, I finally finished Walden and while there was a huge middle chunk that was rather mundane, the conclusion to the book was a bit more interesting. Here are a few more quotes from the book:

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. -p.214

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. - p.215

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. -p. 216

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode. -p.217-218

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. -p219



I share these quotes with you not because I want to seem cultured or wise, but merely because I found my experience living in an ghost town in the mountains of Ecuador to be really similar to Toreau's experience. And despite the boring secions on the colors of the water of Walden pond and the dates of its freezing and thawing, I'm sure if I were to write a book about Licto, my descriptions of the mountains around my house would get equally as inane after a few pages.

Speaking of my experience, if anyt of you would like a window on the Peace Corps experience in Ecuador read this book by a PC-Ecuador volunteer in the 60's: Living Poor, by Moritz Thomsen