Henry David Thoreau remains one of America’s most enduring literary and philosophical voices. Born David Henry Thoreau on June 12, 1817, given the name David Henry, but would later change it to Henry David as he felt it sounded more like a
Henry David Thoreau was an American essayist, a poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. His well-known essays were Civil Disobedience and Life Without Principle. Friedrich Niet…
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, philologist, and a profound influencer of modern intellectual thought. His work is known for its radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth, its…
Ralph Waldo Emerson's writings, which comprised "The Conduct of Life," is similar to a guidebook for how to live life well. It's full of essays on various subjects, view them as you would long advice letters. Emerson focused his advice on w…
Ralph Waldo Emerson, a central figure in the American transcendentalist movement, revolutionized poetry by emphasizing individual intuition, nature, and spirituality as primary sources of insight and inspiration. Eschewing traditional Europ…
I WISH to meet the invitation with which the ladies have honored me by offering them a portrait of real life. It is a representative life, such as could hardly have appeared out of New England; of an age now past, and of which I think no ty…
IT IS NATURAL to believe in great men. If the companions of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal it would not surprise us. All mythology opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high and poetic; that is,…
Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are lik…
The Editor to the Reader Thoughts on Modern Literature New Poetry Two Years Before the Mast Social Destiny of Man In the history of the Church no subject has been more fruitful of controversy than the Lord’s Supper. There never has been any…
The Sage of Concord has always been noted for his mystic sentences. Occasionally he purchases compression at the expense of clearness, and condenses almost to abruptness. His style – apparently modeled after that of Carlyle – is marred by a…
WHOEVER looks at the insect world, at flies, aphides, gnats, and innumerable parasites, and even at the infant mammals, must have remarked the extreme content they take in suction, which constitutes the main business of their life. If we go…
SEYD melted the days like cups of pearl,Served high and low, the lord and churl,Loved harebells nodding on a rock,A cabin hung with curling smoke,Ring of axe or hum of wheelOr gleam which use can paint on steel,And huts and tents; nor loved…