Emerson's House (8:23 PM, 02/18/2018)

                
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Journal, 1845

Early Summer

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to give a true account of it.

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.

As much as sportsmen go in pursuit of ducks, and gunners of musquash, and scholars of rare books, and travelers of adventures, and poets of ideas, and all men of money, I go in search of arrowheads.

When first I took up my abode in the woods, my house was not finished. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to give a true account of it.

Late Summer

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.

As much as sportsmen go in pursuit of ducks, and gunners of musquash, and scholars of rare books, and travelers of adventures, and poets of ideas, and all men of money, I go in search of arrowheads.

When first I took up my abode in the woods, my house was not finished. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to give a true account of it.

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.

As much as sportsmen go in pursuit of ducks, and gunners of musquash, and scholars of rare books, and travelers of adventures, and poets of ideas, and all men of money, I go in search of arrowheads.

When first I took up my abode in the woods, my house was not finished. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up.