Henry David Thoreau

The perfect books for the true book lover, Penguin's Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of history's most prodigious thinkers. Each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-driven design that highlights the bookmaker's art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped our world. Thoreau's account of his solitary and self-sufficient home in the New England woods remains an inspiration to the environmental movement—a call to his fellow men to abandon their striving, materialistic existences of 'quiet desperation' for a simple life within their means, finding spiritual truth through awareness of the sheer beauty of their surroundings.

Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

Gavin

Tiny extract from Walden, which I tried / pretended to read as a teen. great example of a completely different ethos from mine.

He opens with a little C18th verbal dance about how immodest and outré it is to write in the first person about your own life. I sometimes miss that norm, which he helped kill. Then there's the quiet misanthropy and primitivism inside certain forms of the love of nature, which I can't really attribute to him. And lastly the contempt for work, all work except food and shelter and confessional writing anyway.


  Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine tomorrow. As for work, we haven’t any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus’ dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still.

Henry Thoreau

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves � and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives � and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Thoreau�s account of his solitary and self-sufficient home in the New England woods remains an inspiration to the environmental movement � a call to his fellow men to abandon their striving, materialistic existences of �quiet desperation� for a simple life within their means, finding spiritual truth through awareness of the sheer beauty of their surroundings.

Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

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