Walden by Henry David Thoreau is a book of ornate prose and provocative ideas. In lavish language and oracular voice he indulges in fancies of frugality and abstinence. It’s a challenging book, stylistically and ideologically. It feels ambitious and insightful at times, but often also reckless and juvenile. Its status as a classic of American literature is not unanimous.

From page three:

Men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life.

From page thirteen:

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, not even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

From page twentyone:

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.