这是一本宁静、恬淡、充满慧的书。其中分析生，批判习俗处，语语惊人，字字闪光，见解独特，耐人寻味。多篇是形象描绘，优美细致，像湖水的纯洁透明，像山林的茂密翠绿；也有一些篇页说理透，十分精辟，给人启迪。

这是一本清新、健康引人向上的书，对于天，对于黎明，都有极其动人的描写。这里有大自然给人的澄净的空气，而无工业社会带来的环境污染。读着它，读者自然会感觉到心灵的纯净精神的升华。

从1845年7月4日到1847年9月6日，梭罗独自生活在瓦尔登湖边，差不多正好两年零两个月。瓦尔登湖不仅为梭罗提供了一个栖身之所，也为他提供了一种独特的精神氛围。

1846年2月，梭罗按计划前去康科德城讲课。梭罗准备了一个“我自己的历史”（The History of Myself）的课题。没想到讲座受到观众的热烈欢迎。在这次讲座的启发下，梭罗将自己的讲课提纲加以整理，又经过了很长一段时间的写作，终于完成了Walden，or Life in Woods（《瓦尔登湖，又名林中生活散记》）这部传世的名著。《瓦尔登湖》出版于1854年，这是19世纪美国文学非小说著作中最受读者欢迎的书籍。目前，此书已出现了两百多个版本，并被译成许多种文字。

1. Economy

2. Complemental Verses

3. Where I Lived, and What I Lived for

4. Reading

5. Sounds

6. Solitude

7. Visitors

8. The Beanfield

9. The Village

10. The Ponds

11. Baker Farm

12. Higher Laws

13. Brute Neighbors

14. House-Warming

15. Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors

16. Winter Animals

17. The Pond in Winter

18. Spring

19. Conclusion

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil,are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance --which his growth requires--who has so often to use his knowledge？ We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits,can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live,are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins oes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass ; still living,and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today,insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offenses ; lying, flattering,voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility, or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity,that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or,more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how httle.

P5-6