Tag: thoreau

How Henry Thoreau’s Experience Living Alone in Nature Inspired Some of His Greatest Writings

Henry David Thoreau accomplished a great deal in his short but busy life as a philosopher, activist, and naturalist. His profound influence as the grandfather of environmentalism and nonviolent resistance movements is difficult to overstate. As if this were not enough, he even improved the quality of pencils by innovating a method of binding graphite…


Truth Tellers: Henry David Thoreau and the ‘Essential Truth’

Great poets and seers do not write for classrooms or scholars; they write for other people, other souls. I call to witness Leo Tolstoy, who dropped out of school; Virginia Woolf, who was not allowed to go to school; and Charles Dickens, who was expelled from school. Although Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) did indeed graduate…