“It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.”

“My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles.”

House, $ ⁄2 Farm one year, ⁄2 Food eight months, 8 74 Clothing &c., eight months, ⁄4 Oil, &c., eight months, 2 00 In all, $ ⁄4 (replica of Thoreau’s cabin)

(the interior) “... it costs me nothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should look in.”

(Thoreau statue in front of cabin replica) “... the swiftest man is he who goes afoot.”

“I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them.”

“So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express!”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” (first edition of Walden)

“If, then, we would indeed restore mankind..., let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our own brows, and take up a little life into our pores.” (frontispiece of first edition of Walden)

My feet in Walden Pond

Henry Thoreau’s gravestone

Boating on the Concord River

One of many stone bridges that cross the Concord.

“ I have passed down the river before sunrise on a summer morning, between fields of lilies still shut in sleep; and when, at length, the flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open before me... Like the unfolding of a banner, so sensible is this flower to the influence of the sun’s rays.”

The Old North Bridge “By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world.” from “The Concord Hymn” Ralph Waldo Emerson