The selections chosen for this collection reflect the broad range of Thoreau’s interests, and they are taken from the whole of his writings—his letters and journals as well as his lectures, essays, and books. Preference has been given here to longer passages in which he develops a thought and sees it through to its conclusion. Sublime and volatile truths, these passages are intended to be read and reflected upon as meditations for each day of the year.

Thoreau is sometimes criticized as a solitary mystic who preferred a life in the woods to active engagement with the world of his time. Nothing could be further from the truth, as many of these words will reveal. Thoreau realized that spiritual growth does not take place in total isolation and that social, economic, and political conditions affect us all.

In Walden Thoreau tells us that he desires to wake up his neighbors. It is not his intention that people should adopt his mode of living, he writes. They should find and pursue their own way, not their father’s or their mother’s or someone else’s. He means to be provocative, to be “extra-vagant,” to wander out of bounds, as it were. Thoreau summons us to the spiritual life. He is a wake-up call to greater awareness.

“This is a superb collection of the best of Henry Thoreau. Andrews has given us not just the short bits everyone knows but substantial, beautiful, moving and thought-provoking passages. An essential book for any one interested in Thoreau.”

—Robert D. Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind and Emerson: The Mind on Fire