Walden

This book is good ethically,it makes you consider how our country, and citizens ought to behave. You begin to realize that the premise of our Democratic government which Americans so pride themselves on is flawed. Thoreau makes you consider what it is you as a citizen, as a rebel, as a politician to for this country. As well as what you should do for yourself. You come to realize that perhaps the things we think we need are things that are not only unnecessary, but also things that tie us down. Really good book. However, this book is also very long and tedious in some of its explanations and stories. So if you decide to read it,be ready to really hunker down and give this book your all.

Couldn't recommend this book more highly. In the era of immediate social media access, I think the ideals of respite, quiet and decompression is so needed. Thoreau's little gem is as timeless as ever.

Honestly, this book is a little hard to get through at times, but seems like it could have been written yesterday.

Aside from the peace and quiet ol Hank has on the pond. That would be peace and "holy crap is that plane planning on landing in the pond?!?!" these days.

But other than that, one of my faves. And you can trust me, I've read 9 books since high sch... ever.

This book is probably a good study piece in a writing class or school but I found the archaic writing hard going. I certainly understand the sentiments of the book but perhaps Into the Wild before this was a spoiler for me.

Thoreau had been part of my studies a long time ago. I felt inspired to re-read "Walden" when I received my new Kindle Fire HD. So I downloaded it. His thinking and writing are so fresh and so stimulating - just as they were long ago. I'm glad I decided to visit Walden Pond again.

I'm a huge outdoor enthusiast with a strong spiritual connection to the land. I've always assumed I would love Walden, so I finally got around to reading it and I was disappointed. After the first few pages I understood Thoreau's point....yet he drones on and on endlessly in thick heavy prose often going pages without a carriage return. Run on sentences galore as he pontificates ad nauseam. Maybe it is just the point I'm at in my life. With two young kids and two working parents I don't have the free time to appreciate his writing style (I know this is Thoreau's point right.) I found myself jumping ahead looking for that nugget of wisdom that would expand my horizons, but instead just found unnecessarily long-winded explanations of ideas and theories I long ago explored on my own. I tried to push-on and give the book and I a chance to find our rhythm...but ultimately I've walked away.

Thoreau is not the most exciting of writers, but he makes many interesting observations of nature and society. This text also includes his stinging rebuke on the North's apathy in slave-holding America, Civil Disobedience.

A good book for a slow summer afternoon.

I thought I would take advantage of a rainy Sunday and read Walden which I heard changed peoples lives. I found it a great way to fall asleep. I woke up and read the Wikipedia page to get the gist. Glad it only cost me 99 cents. Best sleep in quite a while.

It is a good read from the point of view that Thoreau was a great man and philosopher. Some of his philosophy comes through in parts, but the book drags on in most parts because of too much detailing. One has to learn to skip and skim through large parts - and linger only on the jewels in between.

Dishonest book. Only publishing date given is 2014. Claims all rights reserved. Uncredited editor combined without indication Thoreau's works which are actually in public domain since the 19th century.

I got this book because I heard how good it was, but for the most part it just seemed like a lot of hypocritical complaining about people that live differently than him. For example he runs down the life of a farmer then goes to work for one to use him to get money to build his house. He does not believe in division of labor yet has to borrow an axe and other tools from someone else. He thinks your not a man if you cant build your own house yet he can't blacksmith his own tools? I guess it was just not for me, hard to read an entire chapter comparing Walden ponds depth, color, size, ect to every other pond he can think of for no reason. Overall book was boring, I know its a classic and I agree with a little simple living sometimes but he thought he was better than every one else just because he lived away from the city.

Of course it's an American classic, but I found it to be self-righteous and condescending. I was so put off I didn't get very far into it. The writing is stiff and convoluted, but I assume it was the style of the time.

I read this book in High School and didn't really understand it then and when I just completed it for the second time, I felt the same way. Understanding the Transcendentalism and Brahamn just isn't for Me. It was tough at times to read and sometimes it was easy. It is just not for me, however other people like it and that is fine with me.

I am glad that I finally read this book, because it is so well known, but parts of it were boring and I don't agree with most of Thoreau's opinions. But, I did enjoy the simpler parts. I enjoyed his nature observations, especially the loon that he couldn't get close to, and that kept diving into the lake, swimming under his boat, and reappearing at another part of the lake. The war between the ants and the squirrels, rabbits, and birds in the winter were also fun.

I'm not sure what happened. I loved this book in high school. Wanting to read it forty years later was a mistake on my part. It's Throreau for goodness sakes, you have to read at least once. Twice? Nu uh.

Even though this book is often touted as an important piece of literature, I actually found it to be clumsy and a bit overbearing. Thoreau paints himself as being the most noble person of all mankind simply because he built a primitive shack and lived in in for about two years. His arrogance is obvious and his disdain for other people is evident. Basically he lived as a bum and then patted himself on the back for being a good one.

The message of Walden is interesting, but Thoreau's writing ruins it. Not only does he excessively go off topic, but he also is not able to effectively communicate what he is trying to say.
As for this edition, it is very good, and that is where the two stars of my review come from.
If Thoreau were to publish Walden today, editors would refuse to let him do it.

Been reading some classics because I feel I should. This was not an engaging read. Got bored and skipped around to find interesting parts. Not sure how a writer can go on so long on his philosophy of life.

It was interesting, but I suspect I was expecting too much from it. I became a little bored by all the minute details and put it down before it was over. Maybe at some later date, I'll revisit Walden and David Thoreau.

My house burned down and while we were still living in a hotel, I bought this book in hardcover because it has always spoken to my soul. His experiment in nature is evocative and inspiring. But hardcover isn't very portable, so I replaced it with this Kindle edition and every time I read even a few pages I am reminded how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful world.

I was not impressed with this book. I'd heard such great things about it as a nature book, but I would not consider it a nature book. It was more of a philosophy book. At least I can say I read it.

The only paragraph worth reading is here:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

The rest of the book is crap.

This book chronicles Thoreau's 2 years in the "wilderness" building a cabin and farming a garden - he never mentions that the "wilderness" was just two miles outside his home town. The book doesn't hold up to scrutiny - for example, he claims that he dug a 5' x 7' root cellar into the side of a mountain in only two hours of digging with a shovel. If you enjoy reading expense ledgers accurate to a fraction of a penny, by all means get this book.

Henry David Thoreau had a mind that was intelligent, complex, and rigidly righteous. He was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817, into a family of uppity Unitarian abolitionists. After attending Harvard, he worked as a schoolteacher for a few years. Later, he lived with Ralph Waldo Emerson, serving as a tutor, handyman, and editorial assistant. Emerson took him under his wing, and encouraged his literary efforts. Emerson owned land on Walden Pond, and he allowed the young man to build a cabin there. Living by the pond led to experiences that inspired Thoreau’s classic, Walden.

Thoreau built the cabin at age 27, and moved out at 30. His thinking was not yet set in concrete, and it wandered to many regions in the world of ideas, tirelessly searching for eternal truth. He read the ancient classics in Greek and Latin, and discovered that enlightened philosophers preferred paths of voluntary simplicity. He adored Native Americans, because they thrived in wildness and enjoyed a simple life. He worshipped nature, and loved spending time outdoors.

Unfortunately, he was born during a diabolical hurricane of what is now called Sustainable Growth™. Concord was becoming discord, as the ancient forest was replaced with gristmills, sawmills, cotton mills, a lead pipe factory, and a steam powered metalworking shop. It was rare to stroll by Walden Pond in daytime and not hear whacking axes. Railroads were the latest fad for rich folks. Countless trees were hacked to death to provide millions of railroad ties. By 1850, just ten percent of the land around Concord was forest, and wild game was getting scarce.

Obviously, the residents of Concord were not philosophers aglow with timeless wisdom. They were also not wild folks who had lived in the same place for thousands of years without destroying it. These new people acted crazy! They were possessed, out of their minds, infected with the highly contagious status fever. They burned up their precious time on Earth in a furious struggle to appear as prosperous as possible — fancy houses, cool furniture, trendy clothes. If a monkey in Paris put on a traveler’s cap, then every monkey in America must do likewise.

Thoreau was not impressed. “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” In 1845, he moved into his tiny new cabin. He hired a farmer to plow two and a half acres (1 ha), and then planted a bean field. Using a hoe to control the weeds proved to be far more challenging than his fantasy of humble simplicity. The net income for a summer of sweat and blisters was $8.12, far less than envisioned. He learned an important lesson, and this experiment was not repeated.

A low-budget life of simplicity required a low-budget diet. Thoreau’s meals majored in water and unleavened bread made from rye and corn meal. Over time, he lost interest in hunting and fishing. “I had rarely for many years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc.; not so much because of any ill effects which I had traced to them, as because they were not agreeable to my imagination.”

The second summer included a pilgrimage to Maine. He had a gnawing hunger for genuine wilderness that Concord could not satisfy. He also wanted to meet real live Indians, and be invigorated by their purity. Alas, Mount Katahdin was a rugged wilderness without trails, and the philosopher from Harvard was shocked by how difficult it was.

Big Mama Nature gave him a swift dope slap. In The Maine Woods he recorded her harsh words. “I have never made this soil for thy feet, this air for thy breathing, these rocks for thy neighbors. Why seek me where I have not called thee, and then complain because you find me but a stepmother?” This nasty wilderness “was a place for heathenism and superstitious rites — to be inhabited by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild animals than we.”

His experience with the Indians also disappointed him. After 200 years of colonization, their traditional culture had long been bludgeoned by smallpox, whiskey, missionaries, and civilization. “Met face to face, these Indians in their native woods looked like the sinister and slouching fellows whom you meet picking up strings and paper in the streets of a city. There is, in fact, a remarkable and unexpected resemblance between the degraded savage and the lowest classes of the great city. The one is no more a child of nature than the other.”

Sadly, Thoreau never experienced a community that was fully wild, free, and at one with the land. He returned to Walden, a tame and comfortable place, and buried some fantasies. He wasn’t at home in wilderness, and he wasn’t at home in civilization. Could he find peace somewhere in between? He soon packed up his stuff, left the cabin, and returned to the Emerson home. He had learned a lot from 26 months of solitude, but he was wary of getting stuck in a rut.

After eight years of work, and seven drafts, Walden was published in 1854. It caught the world’s attention, and he finally had a steady stream of income. Thoreau’s sister died of tuberculosis in 1849. His father died of tuberculosis in 1859. In 1862 it killed Henry, at the ripe old age of 44.

He had spent his life trying to find a beautiful, healthy, and ethical way of living. His education prepared him for a life in civilization instead, loading his mind with myths, hobbles, and blinders. Thoreau was well aware that his society was on a dead end path. Its citizens robotically submitted to the peer pressure of their culture. They could imagine no other way to live. The only thing they could change was their clothes. Consequently and tragically, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

His core message was “explore thyself” — question authority, question everything, every day. Never assume that you are crazy, and never assume that your society is normal and sane — it is not! Stay away from status fever, and the living dead that suffer from it. Go outdoors! Live simply! Live! Live! Live!

Thoreau’s world was deranged. But viewed from the twenty-first century, it looks far less crazy than our nightmare. He gathered chestnuts by the pond, a species that would later be wiped out by blight. The skies were often filled with passenger pigeons, now extinct. Millions of buffalo still thundered across the plains. He drank water directly from the pond. There were no cars or aircraft. Most folks moved by foot or horse. They did not live amidst hordes of strangers, they knew each other. None spent their lives inside climate-controlled compartments, staring at glowing screens.

Henry would have hated our world. His mission was to live as mindfully as possible. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

But wow, what a yawn! I decided to read this because a) I usually read such random "fluff", that I thought I should try to better myself, and b) I've gone to Walden quite a few times now, and was interested to hear what Mr Thoreau had to say about his experience (though admittedly I'm sure much has changed between his visits and mine). My conclusion? I'll stick with my "fluff".

I get it, it's a "classic", but that doesn't mean it makes for good reading. As others have said, I went into it expecting some deep thoughts, grand ideas he came up with while spending some quality time with nature, whether I agreed with them or not. What I got were a few quotable lines here and there, mixed into a book that details how he grew beans, how much he spent to build stuff, and what I feel are some rather unfair judgments on other peoples' lives (almost like the 17th century equivalent of "I'm a *fill in the blank* and I'm so much better than these other misguided soles who aren't").

Personally, bored to tears with the book. If you're looking for a good story, this isn't it. If you're looking for deep thoughts about nature, it's probably better to go out there yourself and come up with your own.

Living in my friends guest house a mile from town is hardly living in the wild. Thoreau, and Emerson for that matter fail to ever make anything interesting. He spends an entire chapter blathering on about how much he loves wild chickens. I have forced myself to finish crappy books like 'Atlas Shrugged', this is the only one I threw in the trash halfway through. It is like reading a legal brief.

Henry David Thoreau had a mind that was intelligent, complex, and rigidly righteous. He was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817, into a family of uppity Unitarian abolitionists. After attending Harvard, he worked as a schoolteacher for a few years. Later, he lived with Ralph Waldo Emerson, serving as a tutor, handyman, and editorial assistant. Emerson took him under his wing, and encouraged his literary efforts. Emerson owned land on Walden Pond, and he allowed the young man to build a cabin there. Living by the pond led to experiences that inspired Thoreau’s classic, Walden.

Thoreau built the cabin at age 27, and moved out at 30. His thinking was not yet set in concrete, and it wandered to many regions in the world of ideas, tirelessly searching for eternal truth. He read the ancient classics in Greek and Latin, and discovered that enlightened philosophers preferred paths of voluntary simplicity. He adored Native Americans, because they thrived in wildness and enjoyed a simple life. He worshipped nature, and loved spending time outdoors.

Unfortunately, he was born during a diabolical hurricane of what is now called Sustainable Growth™. Concord was becoming discord, as the ancient forest was replaced with gristmills, sawmills, cotton mills, a lead pipe factory, and a steam powered metalworking shop. It was rare to stroll by Walden Pond in daytime and not hear whacking axes. Railroads were the latest fad for rich folks. Countless trees were hacked to death to provide millions of railroad ties. By 1850, just ten percent of the land around Concord was forest, and wild game was getting scarce.

Obviously, the residents of Concord were not philosophers aglow with timeless wisdom. They were also not wild folks who had lived in the same place for thousands of years without destroying it. These new people acted crazy! They were possessed, out of their minds, infected with the highly contagious status fever. They burned up their precious time on Earth in a furious struggle to appear as prosperous as possible — fancy houses, cool furniture, trendy clothes. If a monkey in Paris put on a traveler’s cap, then every monkey in America must do likewise.

Thoreau was not impressed. “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” In 1845, he moved into his tiny new cabin. He hired a farmer to plow two and a half acres (1 ha), and then planted a bean field. Using a hoe to control the weeds proved to be far more challenging than his fantasy of humble simplicity. The net income for a summer of sweat and blisters was $8.12, far less than envisioned. He learned an important lesson, and this experiment was not repeated.

A low-budget life of simplicity required a low-budget diet. Thoreau’s meals majored in water and unleavened bread made from rye and corn meal. Over time, he lost interest in hunting and fishing. “I had rarely for many years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc.; not so much because of any ill effects which I had traced to them, as because they were not agreeable to my imagination.”

The second summer included a pilgrimage to Maine. He had a gnawing hunger for genuine wilderness that Concord could not satisfy. He also wanted to meet real live Indians, and be invigorated by their purity. Alas, Mount Katahdin was a rugged wilderness without trails, and the philosopher from Harvard was shocked by how difficult it was.

Big Mama Nature gave him a swift dope slap. In The Maine Woods he recorded her harsh words. “I have never made this soil for thy feet, this air for thy breathing, these rocks for thy neighbors. Why seek me where I have not called thee, and then complain because you find me but a stepmother?” This nasty wilderness “was a place for heathenism and superstitious rites — to be inhabited by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild animals than we.”

His experience with the Indians also disappointed him. After 200 years of colonization, their traditional culture had long been bludgeoned by smallpox, whiskey, missionaries, and civilization. “Met face to face, these Indians in their native woods looked like the sinister and slouching fellows whom you meet picking up strings and paper in the streets of a city. There is, in fact, a remarkable and unexpected resemblance between the degraded savage and the lowest classes of the great city. The one is no more a child of nature than the other.”

Sadly, Thoreau never experienced a community that was fully wild, free, and at one with the land. He returned to Walden, a tame and comfortable place, and buried some fantasies. He wasn’t at home in wilderness, and he wasn’t at home in civilization. Could he find peace somewhere in between? He soon packed up his stuff, left the cabin, and returned to the Emerson home. He had learned a lot from 26 months of solitude, but he was wary of getting stuck in a rut.

After eight years of work, and seven drafts, Walden was published in 1854. It caught the world’s attention, and he finally had a steady stream of income. Thoreau’s sister died of tuberculosis in 1849. His father died of tuberculosis in 1859. In 1862 it killed Henry, at the ripe old age of 44.

He had spent his life trying to find a beautiful, healthy, and ethical way of living. His education prepared him for a life in civilization instead, loading his mind with myths, hobbles, and blinders. Thoreau was well aware that his society was on a dead end path. Its citizens robotically submitted to the peer pressure of their culture. They could imagine no other way to live. The only thing they could change was their clothes. Consequently and tragically, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

His core message was “explore thyself” — question authority, question everything, every day. Never assume that you are crazy, and never assume that your society is normal and sane — it is not! Stay away from status fever, and the living dead that suffer from it. Go outdoors! Live simply! Live! Live! Live!

Thoreau’s world was deranged. But viewed from the twenty-first century, it looks far less crazy than our nightmare. He gathered chestnuts by the pond, a species that would later be wiped out by blight. The skies were often filled with passenger pigeons, now extinct. Millions of buffalo still thundered across the plains. He drank water directly from the pond. There were no cars or aircraft. Most folks moved by foot or horse. They did not live amidst hordes of strangers, they knew each other. None spent their lives inside climate-controlled compartments, staring at glowing screens.

Henry would have hated our world. His mission was to live as mindfully as possible. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

But wow, what a yawn! I decided to read this because a) I usually read such random "fluff", that I thought I should try to better myself, and b) I've gone to Walden quite a few times now, and was interested to hear what Mr Thoreau had to say about his experience (though admittedly I'm sure much has changed between his visits and mine). My conclusion? I'll stick with my "fluff".

I get it, it's a "classic", but that doesn't mean it makes for good reading. As others have said, I went into it expecting some deep thoughts, grand ideas he came up with while spending some quality time with nature, whether I agreed with them or not. What I got were a few quotable lines here and there, mixed into a book that details how he grew beans, how much he spent to build stuff, and what I feel are some rather unfair judgments on other peoples' lives (almost like the 17th century equivalent of "I'm a *fill in the blank* and I'm so much better than these other misguided soles who aren't").

Personally, bored to tears with the book. If you're looking for a good story, this isn't it. If you're looking for deep thoughts about nature, it's probably better to go out there yourself and come up with your own.

Living in my friends guest house a mile from town is hardly living in the wild. Thoreau, and Emerson for that matter fail to ever make anything interesting. He spends an entire chapter blathering on about how much he loves wild chickens. I have forced myself to finish crappy books like 'Atlas Shrugged', this is the only one I threw in the trash halfway through. It is like reading a legal brief.

I have so much about Thoreau and "Walden", but after reading it, I now picture Thoreau as a self-centered, self-enamored egotist. Much like today's politicians.
While in College I took Art Appreciation, the prof said, "Art is what you get out of it, what you think about when viewing." He also said the answers on the test depend on what I (prof) think, not what you think. Walden is the same for me. Many love it, I don't.

It is nice to read something like this even if the best case scenario now is to mock people who idolize Thoreau.

Hes writing seems to have no point, no objective, except maybe to make himself seem very smart. I don't buy it. Nor do I buy into the ethics of squatting or the innocent beauty of nature.

This book should be read:
1) by hipsters who feel their life is pointless - they might be entranced with the descriptions of nature.
2) by people who are tired of hearing people refer to Thoreau without reading his works.

I chose Walden to read because it is considered a classic. Once I started getting into the book, I found that it was self centered writing. Just because he chose to live as he did, doesn't give him the right to pass judgement on the others in the community for the way they chose to live.

This book is great if you need to go to sleep. How many different ways are needed to describe the environment in which one lives? Well, if you like details, maybe extreme details of how things are at Walden Pond, then this is a perfect book for those that don't look for hidden meanings. But if you look beyond the printed word, you realize that one of the reasons for this book is to suggest to the reader that they don't have to travel the world going to exotic places to see 'nature' - when there is plenty of nature where you live - and it's where you live, where you feel most comfortable is the only nature you need . . . but you have to see it, experience it, and enjoy that nature around in the finest of details each and every day, for the next day is not promised. In other words, be happy where you are, who you are, and enjoy the moment.

Walden is undoubtedly Thoreau's masterpiece; it carries a refreshing message or warning for those of us who are disgusted with today's culture of greed and capitalism. While living in solitude on Walden Pond, Thoreau is atune to nature and its significance in feeding the soul while depicting a life of simplicity where a certain amount of money earned can actually be "too much." This refreshing read also delves into Thoreau's curious and analytical mind, with various nature experiments that tell the story of Walden Pond in a physical sense. One can't help but try to visualize Thoreau in a log cabin for months, and ask if they themselves could ever do such a thing. This book also triggers the imagination. Thoreau goes into such intricate detail in his descriptions throughout the novel that it's inevitable to have your own picture drawn in your head. To sum up, this book is an escape from the norm, and is an interesting read from an even more interesting man.

The issues and ideas Thoreau takes on in this volume are just as fresh and relevant today as they were when he wrote them. The particulars may have changed, though not much. The principles, the moral and philosophical questions, not at all.

Practical and useful thoughts...wrapped in a pastoral setting that is NOT as remote as either the author or reviewers would have you think. If one wanted to truly break the shackles of dependence, why not follow through and become a mountain man? Me thinks old Hank was a bit of a posturer and not above wily self promotion...

Civil disobedience! Brilliant treatise. We must do this now. Federal, state, county, and municipal governments need to be reorganized. True power must rest in the hands of the people.
Government serves people, not the other way around.

I had just read "The Adventures of Henry David Thoreau" and
decided to read his most famous book---Walden. The whole world agrees
Thoreau can write. His writing is poetic, a joy to read. Soon my joy was replaced
with impatience. He is so self centered. It is me me me. He actually says some
stupid things, and also plenty of brilliant words He lost me on page 7 when he
took his text on old people. He summarized his thoughts about seniors by
saying in his 30 years he has yet to hear the first syllable of valuable advice.
It took him 1/2 a page to fully express his feelings about listening to his elders.
Glad he was not my child. When he wrote about his life and the beauty of nature
the reader wished for a week or two of this type of life. I especially liked the page about Hugh
Quoil, his deceased neighbor. Quoil was the last inhabitant of Walden Woods before Thoreau.
The author tells of visiting the empty house and finding the remains of Quoil's simple life.
The changing of seasons is beautifully described. I share Thoreau's love of birds.
Every time he wrote about birds I read with joy.

This book has become famous under false pretenses. It is portrayed as a man living closing to nature in a cabin in the woods. That is a very thin pretext. What you actually get is some very slim references to his life in the woods which is the starting point for page after page of drivel relating to god and the universe and the cosmos and the solar system and every other idiotic philosophical meandering Thoreau wrote.

In internet terms Thoreau is one of those writers who has not discovered paragraphs or plot or interest. He just babbles on and on and on and ...

He has discovered the comma, which he uses, extensively, to allow, a, single, sentence, to extend, over several pages.

There is a certain irony in that Walden is portrayed as a model for people to live simply. Yet he takes the simplest of ideas (say hoeing his beans) and turns it into a metaphor for the cosmos and all thought for humanity since the beginning of time. What a tosser!

The one interesting aspect of this book is that it is published in 1854 so some of the ideas would be foreign and novel for that time.

What you are reading,what you are believing.
it is not true
Yes it is not true .This is all a lie and you fans are listening and believing it. Hurts right?To know that all you have been trusting is not real. Here is what is not true.
We can not live life on our own.
We should not do what we feel like doing.
We should not have self confidence.
There is one word that can convert these lies into truths.
JESUS.
JESUS will take charge of our life and help us.
We do what JESUS wants us to do in order to
have a gret life.
We should have confidence in JESUS.
JESUS is the truth. The truth is He DIED so that you can live. Satan had us all in his captivity and we were all going to die and stay dead forever.Until JESUS heard the news.
Now the only way to stop that from happening is for someone to die.
"I SHALL DO IT." said JESUS.
Jesus lived in heaven with riches and never ending happiness.But he chose to leave all those behind. Why?
FOR YOU.
He left all that.Came to the wicked world.Suffered. Abused.Humiliated.DIED. So that you won't have eternal death.Now because of Him, you can live forever after you die. The only way to do that is to pray.Pray to him and ask him to forgive you from your sins.Pray and let him know that you believe in him. Receive the gift of eternal life today. Turn away from Walden's lies and turn to JESUS' truth.