How fantastic is Thoreau? Although he was writing about 150 years ago, his works are filled with insights that speak acutely into our twenty first-century lives.
Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817. His most famous work is Walden, and it is one of the greatest books of American literature. I think there’s a deep impulse in a lot of us to reject society to rediscover the simple life and regain a spiritual vision. He saw that me were turning into capitalistic slaves of a system, and America had essentially created a society of dead men walking. Encouraging us to live deeply, he lived what he taught. He’s legit. And raw. And real. He wanted to truly live, and while he was perhaps a little extreme, desperate times call for desperate measures. I can appreciate any outside-the-box thinker. He’s ultimately full of insight and inspiration. What more can you ask for?
Favorite Excerpts:
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, 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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…”
“How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity. I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.”
- from Walden
Famous Works:
Resistance to Civil Government, or Civil Disobedience (1849)
Slavery in Massachusetts (1854)
Walden (1854)
Links:
· http://www.thoreausociety.org/
· http://www.library.ucsb.edu/thoreau/
· http://www.walden.org/Library
· http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/
Next Week: #3.
Hint: He currently pastors a church in Michigan.
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