Henry David Thoreau
Walden, or Life in the Woods

April 12 2016

“The American literature doesn’t have a more beautiful and more profound book than Walden” commented Hermann Hesse. And I knew that I found a favorite book as soon as I started reading.

In the year 1845 the former teacher Henry David Thoreau moved into a secluded log cabin in the woods not far from the city of Concords, Massachusetts. He lived in this hermitage for two and a half years to conduct his “experiment” (he insists on this word): How to obtain true freedom? How to ensure the free development of the individual in the most simple way? And his conclusion is the most powerful case for simplicity. In order to be free, one must let go of attachments, everything you own ends up owning you.

You find the most fundamental ideas in the first chapter Economy and the last one Conclusion. The pages in between are detailed descriptions of enchantment with nature.

The audiobook is attached below plus you can download the PDF here.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
From the last chapter Conclusion

Walden audiobook (length: 14 hours)