I went to the Woods because I wanted to live leisurely and face only the most basic facts in life.
See if I can master the teaching of life, so that when I die, I won't realize that I haven't lived.
Thoreau lived in Walden for two years. There, he was freed from daily affairs and social pressure, and had time to think about what is important in life and write. Different from the usual traditional practice, Thoreau in this period was not a hermit, but a man living on the edge of society. He is not too far from the society, so that he can still have guests to visit; But it's not too close, so he can get rid of the complexity of life and simplify it to the most basic parts.
In 1950s, Thoreau deeply participated in the struggle to abolish slavery. He gave up thinking and seclusion and chose an active political life. He gave speeches and wrote articles against slavery and helped slaves escape to the north by underground railway. He was in poor health. 1862 died before he was 45.
The following excerpts of Notes by the Lake were not commercially successful when they were first published in 1854. Only 2000 copies were sold in five years. However, since then, it has become a classic in American literature. Because it is an excellent news work, it is a portrayal of a person's efforts to find truth and meaning in a simple life, eulogizing a life in harmony with nature and conscience.
..... Many people live a quiet and desperate life. The so-called resignation is a deep-rooted despair. From a desperate city to a desperate country, you have to rely on the courage of mink and muskrat to comfort yourself. Even under the so-called sports and entertainment of human beings, there is a persistent and unconscious disappointment. Actually, it is not entertainment, because it is the result of hard work. It's just a function of being wise and not desperate.
In the words of question-and-answer teaching method, when we consider what is the main purpose of life, what is the real need of life and what is the means of life, it seems that people deliberately choose the same lifestyle because they like it better than other lifestyles. However, they frankly believe that there is no other choice. However, people who are alert and healthy by nature remember that the sun is pure and unreasonable when it rises. It's never too late to abandon prejudice. No matter how old an idea or practice is, it is not credible as long as it lacks supporting evidence. What people agree or acquiesce is true today, and the result may be proved wrong tomorrow. It's just an idea like a cloud of smoke, but some people once regarded this cloud of smoke as a rain cloud that can shed dew for the countryside. What the ancients said you couldn't do, you tried and found that you could do it. The ancient law applies to the ancients, and the new law applies to the newcomers. Perhaps the ancients didn't know how to add new fuel to keep the flame burning because of lack of knowledge; When the couple put a small piece of firewood under the jar, they can wander around the earth at the speed of birds. As the saying goes, "make the old man angry." As a mentor, the old man can never compare with the young man, even worse than the young man, because his age makes him lose more than he gains. Almost everyone doubts whether the smartest person can acquire any absolutely valuable knowledge just by living. In fact, old people have nothing very important to give to young people. As they will inevitably admit, their personal experience is so one-sided and their life is so frustrating for some personal reasons. Maybe it's because they still have some beliefs and some illusions about their experiences. In fact, they are just not so young. I have lived on this planet for about 30 years, and I haven't heard a really valuable suggestion from my elders, not even a sincere suggestion. They didn't tell me anything. Maybe they can't tell me anything to the point. Living here. It's largely an experiment that I haven't tried. Other people's attempts are not good for me If I have any experience that I think is valuable, I will definitely think that my tutor has never told me. ...
I live in the Woods, that is, the first day when I began to spend days and nights there, which happened to be Independence Day, or1July 4, 845. At that time, my house was not built yet and it was not suitable for winter. It hasn't been painted yet, and there is no chimney. It can only hide from the rain. The wall is made of rough, weather-beaten and stained boards, and there are wide cracks in the wall. In the evening, the room is quite cool. The straight wall of the axe and the newly mounted doors and window frames make the house feel clean and airy. Especially in the morning, when the wallboard was soaked by dew, I imagined that at noon, some lovely immortals would seep out of the dew. Throughout the day, this fantasy remained in my imagination more or less with the color of dawn, reminding me of a house I visited in the mountains a year ago. It's an airy, unpainted wooden house, suitable for entertaining wandering fairies or letting their dancing dresses pass through the room. The wind passing through the halls and rooms is like the majestic wind sweeping the ridge, with the intermittent sound of the earth, or just the sound of the sky in the music of the earth. In the morning, the morning breeze has been blowing, creating an endless poetic realm; However, few people can appreciate this poem. Olympus is both, but not in the world. ...
I went to the Woods because I wanted to live a leisurely life. I just faced the most basic facts in life and saw if I could master the teaching of life, so as not to find out that I had never lived before when I died. I don't want to live a life that can't be called life, because the price of survival is so expensive; I don't want to be resigned to my fate unless I have to. I want to live deeply and absorb all the essence of life; I want to live firmly, like Spartans, abandon everything that is not life, work hard, live simply, and limit my life to a very small range and minimize it. If we prove that life is low, then we can fully and truly understand its low status and make it public; If you prove that life is noble, you can learn about it through practice, and you can describe it truly on your next hike. Because, in my opinion, most people are very uncertain about life, whether it is the product of the devil or the creation of God. And they come to the conclusion that "glorifying God and enjoying God's blessing forever" is the main purpose of human beings in this world.
Although fables tell us that we evolved into adults a long time ago, we live a humble life, just like ants. We are still biting off more than we can chew, fighting cranes like elves. This is a mistake, and it is worse; Our best virtue also has its excessive but avoidable meanness. Our lives are occupied by details. An honest man counts with ten fingers; Under very special circumstances, he can put ten toes together and count the others together. Simple, simple, simple again! In my opinion, you should do two or three things, not hundreds; Half a dozen, not a million; Keep your account in a diary. In this changeable ocean of civilized life, clouds, storms, quicksand and many other things should be taken into account. If a person doesn't want to sink into the water and hide in the harbor for a long time, he has to live by careful calculation. To be successful, he must be an excellent calculator. Simplify, simplify again! If eating is necessary, eat one meal a day instead of three meals; Don't eat hundreds of dishes, just eat five; Other things have also been deleted accordingly. Our life is like a German Union made up of many small countries, and the borders are always changing. Even the Germans themselves can't tell you where its border is at a certain moment. Although the country itself has some so-called internal improvements (by the way, these improvements are superficial and superficial), it is still a huge and deformed institution, just like thousands of buildings in Qian Qian, which are full of furniture, trapped by their own traps, destroyed by extravagance and unscrupulous expenses, lacking in careful calculation and valuable goals. The only way to save it, just like saving those houses, is a strict budget, a strict, simpler lifestyle than Barton and a noble goal in life. Life is too fast. People think that it is very important for countries to own businesses, export ice cubes, talk by telegraph and travel 30 miles per hour. There is no doubt that they can or can't do it. However, it is uncertain whether we should live like baboons or like people. ...
Why should we live in such a hurry and waste our lives? We decided that we would feel hungry before we felt hungry. People say that sewing one stitch in time saves nine stitches, so sewing thousands of stitches today and saving nine stitches tomorrow. As for work, we don't have any valuable work yet. We danced St. Vitus, but we couldn't keep our heads still ... After dinner, people hardly took a nap, but when he woke up, he looked up and asked, "What's the news?" It seems that other humans are standing guard for him. There is no doubt that some people ask others to wake him up every half hour, but their purpose is only to be woken up like this. Then, in return, they describe their dreams. After a night's sleep, news is as indispensable as breakfast. "Please tell me who is in the world and where is the news." While drinking coffee and eating noodles, he watched the news: a man's eyes were gouged out in the Wahtu River; At the same time, he didn't expect that he was living in the unfathomable cave of fierce horses in the world, and he had only one underdeveloped eye.
As far as I'm concerned, I can handle it easily without a post office. I don't think anything very important was obtained through the post office. Critically speaking, I have only received one or two letters in my life, and the contents of the letters are worth paying the postage-they were written several years ago. Usually, the low-cost post office is just an institution, through which you can seriously spend a little money to buy other people's ideas, and often spend so little money to play a joke that can't go wrong. I'm sure I've never read anything memorable in the newspaper. If we read a story that a person was robbed, or a person was murdered, or a person was killed in an accident, or a house was burnt down, or a ship sank, or a steam turbine exploded, or a cow was crushed to death on the western railway, or a mad dog was slaughtered, or a group of locusts came in winter, then I absolutely don't have to read any other news. One is enough. If you already know this principle, what's the use of paying attention to a lot of concrete examples and the practical application of this principle? For philosophers, all news, so-called news, is gossip, and its editors and readers are old women who drink tea for a living.
Let's live a leisurely life like nature, and don't let some nuts and mosquito wings fall on sleepers to derail us. Get up early in the morning, don't eat breakfast or breakfast, everything is in no hurry. Whether friends come or go; Whether the doorbell rings or the child cries, it's not bad to spend the day like this. Why should we yield to the trend and follow it? Lunch is like a swift and terrible whirlpool in the middle of a shoal. Don't be upset and at a loss at this time. After this, you will be safe, because the rest of the time will be like a mountain, sailing down with indomitable courage and morning vitality, tied to the mast and enjoying the scenery on the other side like Ulysses. If the engine makes noise, let it make noise until it is hoarse and painful. If the bell rings, why are we running? We can think about what kind of music the bell sounds like. Let's settle down to work. The muddy silt layer composed of ideas, prejudices, traditions, delusions and superficial phenomena covers the whole earth, from Paris to London, from new york to Boston to Concord, from church to government, from poetics to philosophy to religion. We should spread our feet and move forward in the mud until we reach the fields and rocks we call "reality". We said, that's it, that's right ... whether it's life or death, we only pursue reality. If we are really going to die, let us hear the voice of the throat and feel cold at the end of our lives; If we are still alive, let's do our business.
Time is just a stream where I fish. I drink water from the stream; When drinking water, I saw the bottom of the sand and found that the stream was so shallow. Shallow water slipped away, leaving eternity behind. I want to drink deeper and fish in the air. At the end of the sky are stars like pebbles. I can't read numbers. I don't even know the first letter of the alphabet. I always regret that I can't be as smart as I was born. Reason is a sharp knife, it can identify the direction and cut all the way to the mystery of things. I don't want to be busy unless I have to. My brain is my hands and feet. I feel that all my best abilities are concentrated in my brain. My brain can tell me that my brain is digging organs, just like some creatures dig holes with their mouths or front paws. I used my brain to dig a tunnel through these mountains. I think the richest vein is somewhere here, and so is my judgment with this wand and this faint rising fog. I want to start digging here.