The Heart of Thoreau's Journals

Rating:
Summary: At Once the Cheapest and Most Valuable of Books
Review: "The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burs." Thoreau's Journal, June 4, 1839. This is certainly true with me and this book.

No book that I own -- aside from Scripture -- is more valuable to me than this slim one. I have reread it countless times, usually while sitting of a warm or cool evening beneath the trees waiting for the stars to troop out.

In Walden Thoreau speaks of Alexander carrying the Iliad in a precious cask with him on his journeys. This is book worthy to be carried with me on my journey.

As I read and reread this book it causes me to look on everything I have ever thought, done or believed in a new and startlingly new light.

This little paperback is at once one of the cheapest and most valuable books I own.

Rating:
Summary: At Once the Cheapest and Most Valuable of Books
Review: "The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burs." Thoreau's Journal, June 4, 1839. This is certainly true with me and this book.

No book that I own -- aside from Scripture -- is more valuable to me than this slim one. I have reread it countless times, usually while sitting of a warm or cool evening beneath the trees waiting for the stars to troop out.

In Walden Thoreau speaks of Alexander carrying the Iliad in a precious cask with him on his journeys. This is book worthy to be carried with me on my journey.

As I read and reread this book it causes me to look on everything I have ever thought, done or believed in a new and startlingly new light.

This little paperback is at once one of the cheapest and most valuable books I own.

Rating:
Summary: Abstracts speak for themselves
Review: And now another friendship is ended. I know that in love there is no mistake, and that every estrangement is well founded. My life is like a stream that is suddenly dammed and has no outlet. Certainly there is no event comparable for grandeur with the eternal separation - if we may conceive it so - from a being that we have known. I become in a degree sensible of the meaning of finite and infinite. What a grand significance the word "never" acquires. With one with whom we have walked on high ground we cannot deal on any other ground ever after. Each man and woman is a veritable god or goddess, but to the mass of their fellows disguised. There is only one in each case who sees through the disguise. I am perfectly sad at parting from you. I could better have the earth taken away from under my feet, than one good thought of you from my mind.

God could not be unkind to me if he should try.

I think I would watch the motion of these cows in their pasture for a day, which I now see all headed one way and slowly advancing - watch them and project their course carefully on a chart, and report all their behavior faithfully - than wander to Europe or Asia and watch other motions there; for it is only ourselves that we report in either case.

A whole summer - June, July, August - is not too good nor too much to hatch a turtle in. Perchance you have worried yourself, dispaired of the world, meditated the end of life, and all things seemed rushing to destruction; but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with as turtle's pace.

The squirrel that you killed in jest, dies in earnest.

Rating:
Summary: Abstracts speak for themselves
Review: And now another friendship is ended. I know that in love there is no mistake, and that every estrangement is well founded. My life is like a stream that is suddenly dammed and has no outlet. Certainly there is no event comparable for grandeur with the eternal separation - if we may conceive it so - from a being that we have known. I become in a degree sensible of the meaning of finite and infinite. What a grand significance the word "never" acquires. With one with whom we have walked on high ground we cannot deal on any other ground ever after. Each man and woman is a veritable god or goddess, but to the mass of their fellows disguised. There is only one in each case who sees through the disguise. I am perfectly sad at parting from you. I could better have the earth taken away from under my feet, than one good thought of you from my mind.

God could not be unkind to me if he should try.

I think I would watch the motion of these cows in their pasture for a day, which I now see all headed one way and slowly advancing - watch them and project their course carefully on a chart, and report all their behavior faithfully - than wander to Europe or Asia and watch other motions there; for it is only ourselves that we report in either case.

A whole summer - June, July, August - is not too good nor too much to hatch a turtle in. Perchance you have worried yourself, dispaired of the world, meditated the end of life, and all things seemed rushing to destruction; but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with as turtle's pace.

The squirrel that you killed in jest, dies in earnest.

Rating:
Summary: Quintessential
Review: I found this book on the shelf at my school's library after I had read a selection of Ralph Waldo Emerson's in which he praised Thoreau for being a particularly clear-seeing individual. I had never read Thoreau and did not know who he was, but this book immediately became my most valued possession after my own journal.

The editor did a wonderful job of selecting from Thoreau's many (often tedious) writings those that offer most in the way of communicating what he felt about life, love, society, government, death, religion, nature, science, beauty and self. The writing is in many ways flawless. Along with Emerson and Whitman, Thoreau embodied the spirit of American Transcendentalism, the philosphy under which one aspired to realize a word beyong the physical and social world. "The Heart of Thoreau's Journals" is the best evidence that Henry David Thoreau realized such a world and lived contently in it many of the days of his life.

This book is probably the best possible choice for anyone looking to read or know Thoreau. It is necessarily as honest as any other work. And unlike "Walden" or other commercially-produced works, it lacks the endless musings and explanations of ideas and events for the audience's information. It is only the bare naked thoughts and feelings of the author. I would suggest it as preliminary reading for anyone who wants to read his other books. It will give you the foundation of an appreciation for Thoreau that puts all other work in proper perspective.

Rating:
Summary: Quintessential
Review: I found this book on the shelf at my school's library after I had read a selection of Ralph Waldo Emerson's in which he praised Thoreau for being a particularly clear-seeing individual. I had never read Thoreau and did not know who he was, but this book immediately became my most valued possession after my own journal.

The editor did a wonderful job of selecting from Thoreau's many (often tedious) writings those that offer most in the way of communicating what he felt about life, love, society, government, death, religion, nature, science, beauty and self. The writing is in many ways flawless. Along with Emerson and Whitman, Thoreau embodied the spirit of American Transcendentalism, the philosphy under which one aspired to realize a word beyong the physical and social world. "The Heart of Thoreau's Journals" is the best evidence that Henry David Thoreau realized such a world and lived contently in it many of the days of his life.

This book is probably the best possible choice for anyone looking to read or know Thoreau. It is necessarily as honest as any other work. And unlike "Walden" or other commercially-produced works, it lacks the endless musings and explanations of ideas and events for the audience's information. It is only the bare naked thoughts and feelings of the author. I would suggest it as preliminary reading for anyone who wants to read his other books. It will give you the foundation of an appreciation for Thoreau that puts all other work in proper perspective.

Rating:
Summary: This is the Best Thoreau anthology!
Review: I have read most of Thoreau's works, including his journals. The Heart of Thoureau's Journals expands on his themes without having to go through the minatue of his daily writings. Here's a sample- you be the judge:

"Live each season as it passes- breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit and resign yourself to the influences of each. In August, live on berries, not dried meat and pemmican, as if you were on shipboard making your way through a waste ocean. Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of Nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.

Grow green with spring, yellow and ripe with Autumn. Drink of each season's influence as a vial, a true panacea of all remedies mixed for your especial use.

Drink the wine, not of your bottling, but of Nature's bottling. Let Nature do your bottling and pickling and preserving. For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well.She exists for no other end. Do not resist her. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick. Why, "Nature" is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health."

There are 228 pages filled with this kind of wisdom- What a bargain for eight bucks!!

Rating:
Summary: This is the Best Thoreau anthology!
Review: I have read most of Thoreau's works, including his journals. The Heart of Thoureau's Journals expands on his themes without having to go through the minatue of his daily writings. Here's a sample- you be the judge:

"Live each season as it passes- breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit and resign yourself to the influences of each. In August, live on berries, not dried meat and pemmican, as if you were on shipboard making your way through a waste ocean. Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of Nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.

Grow green with spring, yellow and ripe with Autumn. Drink of each season's influence as a vial, a true panacea of all remedies mixed for your especial use.

Drink the wine, not of your bottling, but of Nature's bottling. Let Nature do your bottling and pickling and preserving. For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well.She exists for no other end. Do not resist her. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick. Why, "Nature" is but another name for health, and the seasons are but different states of health."

There are 228 pages filled with this kind of wisdom- What a bargain for eight bucks!!

Rating:
Summary: "Write while the heat is in you."
Review: I once sat through a very snide speech, by a very snide editor, who pontificated in a very snide manner, that "no one wants to read your journals." This editor was of course a fool- the very best writing is to be found in personal journals. Nowhere is this demonstrated to be more true than in Thoreau's. Or as he himself put it,"The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience." Well, these writings inflame the mind. Thoreau was that rarest of of divine gifts, a true Individual. I often wonder if he did not represent the highest point that anyone in our society ever reached- the high water mark of a civilization before steam engines, corporations, and mass education reduced us to our present state.
I was concerned that the journals might suffer by editing, especially if an academic type with a deconstructionist ax to grind got his hands on them. Mr. Shepard's brief introduction put my mind to rest. He obviously has a close sympathy with the spirit of Henry David Thoreau and his selections are masterful. As Shepard puts it: "With a fit audience, though few, he is likely to win a more thoughtful reading now that individuals are so obviously withering among us, now that men are quite obviously enslaved by machines, now that we have floundered about as far as we can in the bogs of stupidity, greed, and cowering compliance that he warned us against long ago."
If _Walden_ spoke to you, these journal entries will speak even more strongly to you. This is the spring from which _Walden_ and all the rest sprang. This is the soul of Thoreau. It is the soul of the true America before the Byzantine rot set in.
There is one line from the very first year of the journals that has never ceased to inspire me: "All fear of the world or consequences is swallowed up in a manly anxiety to do Truth justice."

Rating:
Summary: "Write while the heat is in you."
Review: I once sat through a very snide speech, by a very snide editor, who pontificated in a very snide manner, that "no one wants to read your journals." This editor was of course a fool- the very best writing is to be found in personal journals. Nowhere is this demonstrated to be more true than in Thoreau's. Or as he himself put it,"The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience." Well, these writings inflame the mind. Thoreau was that rarest of of divine gifts, a true Individual. I often wonder if he did not represent the highest point that anyone in our society ever reached- the high water mark of a civilization before steam engines, corporations, and mass education reduced us to our present state.
I was concerned that the journals might suffer by editing, especially if an academic type with a deconstructionist ax to grind got his hands on them. Mr. Shepard's brief introduction put my mind to rest. He obviously has a close sympathy with the spirit of Henry David Thoreau and his selections are masterful. As Shepard puts it: "With a fit audience, though few, he is likely to win a more thoughtful reading now that individuals are so obviously withering among us, now that men are quite obviously enslaved by machines, now that we have floundered about as far as we can in the bogs of stupidity, greed, and cowering compliance that he warned us against long ago."
If _Walden_ spoke to you, these journal entries will speak even more strongly to you. This is the spring from which _Walden_ and all the rest sprang. This is the soul of Thoreau. It is the soul of the true America before the Byzantine rot set in.
There is one line from the very first year of the journals that has never ceased to inspire me: "All fear of the world or consequences is swallowed up in a manly anxiety to do Truth justice."