Thoreau's thoughts. Selections.. ( 1890) PDF book
In selecting the following passages from Thoreau's printed works, for the use of those who are already interested in him, and to win, if possible, new admirers of what has given me so pure and unfailing a satisfaction for now more than forty years, I desired to make a pocket volume, contain- ing beautiful and helpful thoughts, which one might not only read in retirement, but use as a traveling companion, while waiting at a hotel, railway station, or elsewhere, — something even more convenient and ready at hand than the newspaper. I would furnish an antidote to the dissipating, depressing influence of too much newspaper reading, something which instead of filling the mind with gossip, political strife, and misstatement, athletics, pugilism, accounts of shocking accidents, and every kind of criminality, may refresh us with a new sense of the beauty of the world, and make us feel how truly life is worth living.