An open library of thought
Live deliberately; refuse what conscience condemns.
The true cost of a thing is the amount of life exchanged for it; reducing needs frees time for thought, chosen work and attention to the world.
Walden opens with an account of what the cabin and the bean-field cost and earned, set against neighbours burdened by mortgages.
To live deliberately is to examine which habits, possessions and opinions one has truly chosen, and to face the essential facts of life instead of borrowed routines.
Thoreau holds that to a philosopher most news is gossip: one report of a fire or a shipwreck teaches the principle, and a thousand more add little.
No citizen should resign conscience to the legislator; when a law makes one the agent of injustice, open refusal of cooperation and acceptance of the penalty can become a duty.
Thoreau withheld his poll tax so as not to fund a state that upheld slavery and waged war on Mexico.
Wildness, for Thoreau, is less a scenic wilderness than a vital energy that resists domestication; contact with it sharpens perception and keeps culture from hardening into routine.
In the essay Walking he writes that in wildness is the preservation of the world, tying daily walks to the vitality of a culture.