Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still the east end. A gr...eat field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore,--olit, olit, olit,--chip, chip, chip, che char,--che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore,--a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden is dead and is alive again. But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I wish not to be given a title or an appointed position. I can and will do more good if I were made a Federal Agent at Large, and ...I will help best by doing it my way through my communications with people of all ages. First and Foremost I am an entertainer but all I need is the Federal Credentials.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You need not be proud of me.... I'm only being active till you can be again--it isn't such a great desire on my part to serve the ...world and I'll fall back into habits of sloth quite easily!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the subject... of education, is a certain form of energy; the object to be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue.... Moreover this activity ...must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The automobile and the telephone are defeated as instruments of individualism by being applied to the needs of a mass society. The... automobile fulfills man's desire to move over the surface of the earth all by himself; but by becoming accessible to everybody, automobiles have paralyzed our streets. Individualism is possible only in plenty of empty space. Similarly, telephones block their own paths of individual communication when everybody is talking: the phone is too often "busy." Private enterprise cannot but strangle itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we speak the word "life," it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to t...hat fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »