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    Walking
    Walking
    Walking
    Ebook54 pages1 hour

    Walking

    By Henry David Thoreau

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    First delivered as a lecture in 1851, “Walking” is the seminal work on Transcendental philosophy by American author and essayist Henry David Thoreau. Sometimes referred to as “The Wild”, it was Thoreau’s favorite speech and he gave the lecture several more times over the next decade as he refined and expanded his ideas. The final version of this influential essay was published in the “Atlantic Monthly” in 1862 after his death. In “Walking”, Thoreau explains how important nature is to the survival and health of people and how further away modern life is taking people from it. Thoreau viewed walking as a spiritual activity that must be done in a truly natural setting and away from cities and civilization. By spending time in a naturally contemplative activity people can reconnect with their inner selves and find things that they may have lost or overlooked. Thoreau’s essay is a beautiful and thorough introduction to the author’s philosophy on the role that nature and self-reflection should play in human life and his observations on the effects of living too far apart from nature remain particularly relevant in today’s modern world. “Walking” endures as a thought-provoking work on human happiness, as well as one of the most important essays of Transcendentalist literature. This edition includes a biographical afterword.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateMar 20, 2020
    ISBN9781420968309
    Author

    Henry David Thoreau

    Henry Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817, and attended Concord Academy and Harvard. After a short time spent as a teacher, he worked as a surveyor and a handyman, sometimes employed by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Between 1845 and 1847 Thoreau lived in a house he had made himself on Emerson's property near to Walden Pond. During this period he completed A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and wrote the first draft of Walden, the book that is generally judged to be his masterpiece. He died of tuberculosis in 1862, and much of his writing was published posthumously.

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    Reviews for Walking

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    • 5/5
      Best thing he ever wrote; probably the greatest essay by any of the Transcendentalists. Its greatest paragraph: "My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before—a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy."
    • 4/5
      This was my second reading of "Walking" and, this time, I chose to read it in nature. That really made all the difference. I found myself hating it this last fall when I read it in the confines of my tiny little room. Surrounding myself in nature and allowing myself to annotate in the margins made me feel like Thoreau and I were on our own walk, having a conversation. Just like any long conversation there were moments I began to zone out and think about other things but overall it is a wonderful read and an experience I will probably have again.
    • 4/5
      Indeholder "Ole Jacobsen: Indledning", "Om at vandre", "En vintervandring"."Ole Jacobsen: Indledning" handler om ???"Om at vandre" handler om ???"En vintervandring" handler om ???
    • 4/5
      An absolutely elegant and beautiful piece of writing. Thoreau soars and astounds with his mesmerizing prose that touches on many different themes seamlessly, yet inclusively-- privately. This is not one to be mixed.Recommended.

    Book preview

    Walking - Henry David Thoreau

    cover.jpg

    WALKING

    By HENRY DAVID THOREAU

    Walking

    By Henry David Thoreau

    Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-6829-3

    eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-6830-9

    This edition copyright © 2020. Digireads.com Publishing.

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

    Cover Image: a detail of Sunset in the Wood (pencil and brown ink on paper), Aert van der Neer (1603-77), c. 17th century / Bridgeman Images.

    Please visit www.digireads.com

    CONTENTS

    Walking

    Biographical Afterword

    Walking

    I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school-committee, and every one of you will take care of that.

    * * * * *

    I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going ‘a la Sainte Terre’ to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer,—a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

    It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return,—prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again,—if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk.

    To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather an old, order,—not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker,—not the Knight, but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People.

    We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practised this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at least, if their own assertions are to be received, moat of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy

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