In more than 600 striking, thought-provoking excerpts, grouped under 17 headings, Thoreau rails against injustice, gives voice to his love of nature, and advocates simplicity and conscious living. Note.

In more than 600 striking, thought-provoking excerpts, grouped under 17 headings, Thoreau rails against injustice, gives voice to his love of nature, and advocates simplicity and conscious living. Note.

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each.” Modernity rules our lives by clock and calendar, dividing the stream of time into units and coordinating every passing moment with the universal globe. Henry David Thoreau subverted both clock and calendar, using them not to regulate time’s passing but to open up and explore its presence. This little volume thus embodies, in small compass, Thoreau’s own ambition to “live in season”—to turn with the living sundial of the world, and, by attuning ourselves to nature, to heal our modern sense of discontinuity with our surroundings. Ralph Waldo Emerson noted with awe that from flowers alone, Thoreau could tell the calendar date within two days; children remembered long into adulthood how Thoreau showed them white waterlilies awakening not by the face of a clock but at the first touch of the sun. As Thoreau wrote in Walden, “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.” Drawn from the full range of Thoreau’s journals and published writings, and arranged according to season, The Daily Henry David Thoreau allows us to discover the endless variation and surprise to be found in the repetitions of mundane cycles. Thoreau saw in the kernel of each day an earth enchanted, one he honed into sentences tuned with an artist’s eye and a musician’s ear. Thoreau’s world lives on in his writing so that we, too, may discover, even in a fallen world, a beauty worth defending.

“How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health!” —Henry David Thoreau Since his death in 1862, Henry David Thoreau has left an indelible mark on the American mind. A vocal champion of simple living and social equality, he is revered for his tempered prose, gentle words, and wise observations. His most well-known work, Walden, is still read around the world, cherished for both its beautiful writing style and its timeless musings on life, simple living, and nature. Collected in Thoreau on Nature: Sage Words on Finding Harmony with the Natural World are some of Thoreau’s most impactful musings—drawn from the many writings he completed over his lifetime. His work touched on every aspect of living a harmonious life, from respecting your neighbors, whether human or animal, to the joys of a simplified life, free of clutter and distractions. Thoreau on Nature will undoubtedly be an essential resource for anyone seeking to find peace and balance in life.