Walden and Other Writings

The lesson he had taught himself, and which he tried to teach others, was summed up in the one word "Simplify". That meant: simplify the outward circumstances of your life; simplify your needs and your ambitions; learn to delight in the simple pleasures which the world of Nature affords. It meant also: scorn public opinion; refuse to accept the common definitions of success; refuse to be moved by the judgement of others. And unlike most who advocate such attitudes, he put them into practice.

In most books, the I ,or first person, is omitted, in this it will be retained；that, in respect to egotism ,is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.

They lived in an age of increasingly complexity and great hope;we in an age of still greater complexity and growing despair.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. ... All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.