Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) was an American philosopher of the Modern era, associated with Transcendentalism.
Henry David Thoreau was a 19th-century American philosopher, essayist, and naturalist, the second major figure of the Transcendentalist movement after Ralph Waldo Emerson, his mentor and friend. His 1854 book Walden, written during the two years he lived in a small cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, is a foundational text of American nature writing and a meditation on simplicity, self-sufficiency, and the relation between the individual and society. His 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, written in response to his refusal to pay a poll tax in protest against slavery and the Mexican-American War, articulated a doctrine of nonviolent resistance to unjust government that influenced Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. He spent most of his life in Concord, Massachusetts, working as a surveyor and pencil-maker while producing a body of journals, essays, and books central to American letters.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American Transcendentalist philosopher, naturalist, and political essayist whose work has shaped American intellectual culture and the global tradition of non-violent civil disobedience. Born in Concord, Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard, taught briefly, and then attached himself to Ralph Waldo Emerson's intellectual circle as a companion and protégé.
Thoreau's two most influential works are Walden (1854) and Civil Disobedience (1849). Walden records the two years he spent living in a self-built cabin on the shore of Walden Pond on Emerson's land. The book is at once nature writing, autobiography, social criticism, and philosophical meditation, with its argument for a deliberate life pared down to essentials in close attention to the natural world. Civil Disobedience grew out of Thoreau's refusal to pay a poll tax in protest of slavery and the Mexican–American War; he spent a night in the Concord jail and then articulated the principled grounds for individual resistance to unjust laws.
Thoreau's influence ranges across two centuries. Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King all credited Civil Disobedience as a major influence on their respective non-violent traditions. The American environmental movement treats Walden as a foundational text. He died of tuberculosis in 1862 at forty-four.
Key facts
- Nationality
- American
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Transcendentalism
Selected quotes
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“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
p. 10 -
Attributed to Henry David Thoreau:
“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.”
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“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
pp. 366-67 -
“Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”
p. 18 -
“That government is best which governs least.”
Civil Disobedience, opening, 1849
Henry David Thoreau by topic
Frequently asked about Henry David Thoreau
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- Henry David Thoreau was an American philosopher of the Modern era.
- What philosophical movements is Henry David Thoreau associated with?
- Henry David Thoreau was associated with Transcendentalism.
- What was Henry David Thoreau known for?
- Henry David Thoreau was a 19th-century American philosopher, essayist, and naturalist, the second major figure of the Transcendentalist movement after Ralph Waldo Emerson, his mentor and friend.
- How many quotes are attributed to Henry David Thoreau?
- There are 20 attributed quotations from Henry David Thoreau in the 1001Philosophers collection, organized by topic.
Quotes that are not actually from Henry David Thoreau
These lines are widely circulated as Henry David Thoreau, but they do not appear in Henry David Thoreau's works. Each entry below identifies the actual source.
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“Truths and roses have thorns about them.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: This is commonly misattributed because Thoreau wrote it in his journal June 14, 1838, but it was not original. This was a popular aphorism in his day, appearing in several collections of proverbs during his lifetime. Its origin is unknown, but it had appeared in print before his birth. E.g., in Jose
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“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: First attributed to Thoreau in A year of sunshine: cheerful extracts for every day in the year (Kate Sanborn, 1886) and American literature (Mildred Cabell Watkins, 1894), but there is no known citation to Thoreau's works.
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“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: No known citation to Thoreau's works. First found, uncredited, in the 1940s in the variant "Success usually comes to those who are too busy to look for it", p. 711, Locomotive Engineers Journal , Volume 76, 1942. Google Books
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“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Misquotation of a line from Walden cited above, with the addition of a spurious ending. For this and other misattributions, see: The Henry D. Thoreau Mis-Quotation Page
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“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: According to The Quote Investigator , "the earliest instance of this saying was crafted by the enigmatic "L" for "The Daily Crescent" newspaper in New Orleans [in June 1848]. ... The linkage to Henry David Thoreau is unsupported.
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“What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.”
Attributed to Thoreau, in The Life You Were Born to Live: A Guide to Finding Your Life Purpose (1995) by Dan Millman, p. xi, and to Ralph Waldo Emerson in Promotion of Pharmaceuticals: Issues, Trends, Options (1993) by Dev S. Pathak, Alan Escovitz, and Suzan Kucukarslan, p. 74, but no occurrence of it prior to the 1990s has been located. (Disputed.)