Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau recalls the several places where he nearly settled before selecting Walden Pond, all of them estates on a rather large scale. He quotes the Roman philosopher Cato’s warning that it is best to consider buying a farm very carefully before signing the papers. He had been interested in the nearby Hollowell farm, despite the many improvements that needed to be made there, but, before a deed could be drawn, the owner’s wife unexpectedly decided she wanted to keep the farm. Carolyn Chang Honors…

them competitive, materialistic, selfish, and forgetting what is really important. Henry David Thoreau believes to combat this, people need to simplify their lives, minimize the amount of friends they have, meals they eat, and possessions they own (1102). Thoreau graduated from Harvard university and throughout his life he worked as a tutor, house painter, carpenter, mason, surveyor and pencil maker. In 1845 Thoreau moved to Walden Pond, on his friend’s property, where he built himself a cabin…

Do you know anything about Transcendentalism? In class we've been learning about Transcendentalism by reading short stories from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Transcendentalism is an idealistic philosophical and social movement that developed in New England around 1836 in reaction to rationalism. Some people believe that Americans or people in general do not appreciate and connect to nature today. They say that, because people nowadays like to stay inside and play video games or…

superficial needs.” (Thoreau 1) Another theme found in the story was, to live sturdily, man must take his time and think, to live without fear. This report will cover the changes throughout the story between the two themes. The first paragraph of Where I Lived and What I Lived For starts off with a broad explanation of the story plot line and a well worded theme idea. The major theme that I got from the story was, “to live deliberately, man must live without superficial needs.” (Thoreau 1) This…

“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.” - Henry David Thoreau. He thinks people should look at the whole picture before making a resolution about something. You can look at something forever, therefore if you don’t look deep enough you might not ever see the good in someone or something. It’s human nature not see everything there is just too much to see and process on a day to day basis. People should judge less, there are more important things than what someone looks like…

Last year, I read Walden for my English class and it helped me understand performance art and how I want to approach college. Walden is a book by Henry David Thoreau that chronicles his decision to live on a small farm named Walden away from the constraints of society, searching for “higher life.” I expected to read a morality tale about how we should all go back to pre-civilized times and leave evil technology behind. It’s the same presumption I had for art. I thought art was always supposed to…

Ben Franklin, an eighteenth century inventor, poet and writer was in many ways similar and different to the transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. Both men had a way of doing things, even though they were following different ways of living. Ben Franklin would write a daily plan/goal for the day in a virtue journal. The virtue journal would give Franklin virtues he would have to follow for the day, in which he had trouble. One of the virtues he had was industry. The ideas that come from it…

I am writing this editorial in order to express my feelings on the philosophies of Henry David Thoreau in his essay Walden. “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity” this is the idea of Thoreau’s belief on life but it is simply not possible in today’s world. I agree that we should try to simplify our lives as much as possible and reduce our own stress, however we do need to take on responsibilities in order to live and succeed in life. Personally I’m an active person so if I did not have things to do…

“to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” This excerpt from “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau speaks of a life unlived when it's nearing too late. Thoreau writes about living every day as if it were your last, taking in every chance to enrich and define yourself. How pursuing even the most simple of passions could prove to be worthwhile. I agree in the possibility that it is never…

one spot we may turn for getaway from own particular as well. Seen in along these lines, wild introduces itself as best cure to our human selves, a shelter we should by one means or another recoup in the event that we plan to save planet. As Henry David Thoreau once broadly announced, "In Wildness is…