Henry David Thoreau is one of America ’s most dear and misunderstood writers . He ’s famous for retire to a rustic cabin at Walden Pond in the Massachusetts woodwind instrument for two days to ruminate on nature and philosophy , but Thoreau was n’t a recluse or a cranky misanthrope . He was , in a word , a " questioner , " saysJeffrey S. Cramer , curator of accumulation at theThoreau Institute at Walden Woods , and author or editor ofnearly a twelve booksabout Thoreau and his Transcendentalist friend Ralph Waldo Emerson .
" Thoreau is constantly asking head in his own writing , both to himself and to his referee , that make you valuate your living and how you ’re living it , " says Cramer . " If you expect yourself some of the questions that Thoreau asks in his composition and taste to answer them aboveboard , it will , I trust , direct you toward being a better human being . "
bear in 1817 in Concord , Massachusetts , Thoreau never married and knead as a instructor , reader , handyman , pencil - Jehovah ( his sire ’s business ) and a author . His well - know works , " Walden " ( 1854 ) and " Civil Disobedience " ( originally style " electrical resistance to Civil Government " in 1849 ) were n’t bestsellers in his life , but have since become classic of American prose and guidebooks for truth - seekers of all eld .
The few surviving picture of Thoreau show a dour - look humankind with tousled hair and a neckbeard , but Cramer says that Thoreau was far from a sourpuss . He had a tremendous sense of sense of humor , was beloved by children for telling risky taradiddle and even played pranks on his buddyEmerson .
If you ’re still on the fence about Thoreau ( judge " Thó - rowing , " by the way , with the stress on the first syllable ) , read the following five quotes that illustrate the straight - talking depth of one of America ’s most influential mind and writers .
1. “If I am not I, who will be?”
Thoreau was unapologetically true to himself and encouraged others to be . He was very much his own man , uninterested in conforming to the anticipation of nineteenth - century society . Thoreau did n’t care for organized religion or government activity , and recall that slaving away at a job six days a week just to buy more material possessions was a waste matter .
Cramer is so moved by this quotation mark that he thinks it should be carve in rock over every school in America and tell day by day in schoolroom .
" Can you imagine how otherwise every student would feel about who they are ? " inquire Cramer . " We need to be proud of who we are , whatever that take care like , and hold out the life-time that only we are fate to go . "
Bonus quote:“A man does best when he is most himself . "
2. “What does education often do! It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free meandering brook.”
Thoreau ’s first line was as a instructor . He was firedafter only a few weeks at the Concord Center School because he refused to use corporal punishment , so Thoreau and his brother John opened their own school . There they experiment with radical ideas for the time , like subject dialogue between students and teachers , and experiential acquisition .
" If you desire to learn what a huckleberry is , you do n’t sit in a classroom and read a botany Good Book — or have the instructor recite from a phytology book that the students then memorize , as they did in those days , " says Cramer . " In Thoreau ’s school , you decease out to the subject field , you line up huckleberries , you picked huckleberry and you taste huckleberries . "
Even today , Cramer interest that pupil have too much of their lives " order " for them by parent and teacher who prophesy that good grades , the " right " college and a well - pay career is the only recipe for happiness .
" That ’s when pedagogy becomes this ' straight - write out ditch ' that Thoreau was babble about , " state Cramer . " It carry a ' free meandering student ' and put them on this very narrow-minded track . "
fillip quote:“I am still a learner , not a teacher , fertilise slightly omnivorously , graze both angry walk & leaves . "
3. “Surely joy is the condition of life.”
" Joy " and " laughter " are not words that come to mind when you think of Henry David Thoreau and the other members of his Transcendentalist crew . But according to Cramer , Thoreau loved to sing , dance and play the flute , and his public lectures literally left people rolling in the aisles .
" We search at iconic figures like Thoreau and Emerson and we put this layer of sincerity on them , " says Cramer . " We blank out that they were real people and they had a heavy sense of humour . "
And although Thoreau was n’t a church member , he was " spiritual " in the sense that he saw the divine in everything , especially the innate world . In an essay titled " Walking , " Thoreau laments , " How little discernment of the beauty of the landscape there is among us ! " For Thoreau , watching the folio change colors in the declination , or gaze at a distant mountain compass , inspired a childlike sense of joy that he yearned to deal with his readers .
Bonus quote:“Do not charter a serviceman who does your workplace for money , but him who does it for love of it . "
4. “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”
Thoreau did some of his good cerebration when he was off alone in a secluded property like the cabin at Walden Pond . But even during that two - class stint in the Grant Wood , he did n’t cut himself off whole from gild .
" People have this idea that he went off to the woods and never check a someone , and that is not the case , " say Cramer . " When he populate at Walden Pond , he was going to Ithiel Town almost day by day to chit-chat with friends , to go to the post billet , to do various things . And the great unwashed would see him at Walden Pond . "
As many of us have realize during the coronavirus pandemic , man are n’t meant to survive in closing off . But even the sociable Thoreau recognized the grandness of being your own best comrade first , so that when you are alone , says Cramer , " you still have yourself . "
Bonus quote:“A man think or working is always alone , lease him be where he will . Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows . "
5. “Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them?”
Thoreau was a deeply principled mortal who believed in practicing what he preached . He think that slavery was a despicable exercise , for model , so he took his own small rack . During his stop at Walden Pond , he refuse to pay a pate tax because it went to a governing that supported slavery . He spent a Nox in jail for his protest and it take shape the seed of " Civil Disobedience . "
But Thoreau ’s abolitionism did n’t end with a poll taxation protest . Cramer says that the Thoreau crime syndicate dwelling in Concord was a stop on the Underground Railroad , and that after breast feeding runaway enslave masses to wellness , Thoreau would accompany them on the train north to Canada .
" When he felt that it was good and there were no slave catchers around , Thoreau would jump off the train and walk back to Concord , " says Cramer . " Even if he did n’t get together the Abolitionist Party and attend meetings , Thoreau was doing his part in way that many of his emancipationist neighbour would n’t defy to do . "
Bonus quote:“When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere , we are instantly elevated , and so far better already . "
