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Jun 20, 2018 · One of Henry David Thoreau's most frequently quoted sayings is "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Many people have cited this sentence to me. To my surprise, they...
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.
Apr 30, 2012 · While Henry David Thoreau is often credited with variations of the aphorism “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and die with their song still inside them,” that is not what he wrote in...
- The Desperate Treadmill of Desire
- The Art of Raising The Little Into The Large
- Use Your Senses to Discover Worlds Within Worlds
- Find Adventure in Your Backyard
- Make Smaller Symbolic Moves That Stand For Something Greater
- Conclusion
Thoreau’s famous quote — “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation” — is most frequently used as a reason for following one’s passion and achieving a life which avoids the mediocrity of playing it small and attains to extra-ordinary success. And indeed, another one of Thoreau’s most frequently quoted lines is this: Less quoted, however, is t...
The above is another of Thoreau’s most famous quotes. And another where the kernel of its meaning is often missed. To suck the marrow out of life often conjures up an image of outwardlyepic strivings — far-flung adventures and extravagant endeavors of great daring-do. Yet the marrow of a bone is what is within it — the life insidethe external struc...
Beginning from when he was in college, and continuing throughout his life, Thoreau required a long walk in nature each dayto maintain his physical and emotional equilibrium. While he often took these walks along familiar routes, they remained perennially fresh. Thoreau not only went out equipped, as Emerson notes, with “an old music book to press p...
While Thoreau celebrated the title of traveler, the journeys he had in mind had little to do with the covering of physical distance. Like another writer, J.R.R. Tolkien, Thoreau had scant desire for traditional, outward travel, because the richness of his inner life provided a landscape for inexhaustibly interesting explorations. The voyages of sel...
Thoreau’s adventures didn’t have to be grand to be satisfying because their power derived from their symbolicquality. They stood for something bigger and generated meaning over and beyond their actual parts. This was never as true as when it came to Thoreau’s stay at Walden. To us moderns, Thoreau’s sojourn along the shores of Walden pond seems lik...
Avoiding a life of quiet desperation doesn’t mean living exactly like Thoreau did. He not only worked in symbols, his whole life was a symbol — a typefrom which men can draw general lessons. The greatest of these lessons is to learn the art of raising the little into the large. That doesn’t necessarily mean giving up on big, outwardly-facing goals,...
- Brett And Kate Mckay
Jun 24, 2024 · There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. Henry David Thoreau (12 July 1817 – 6 May 1862) was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian.
May 21, 2019 · Henry David Thoreau's quote "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" was an observation that most people live an empty life caused by unfulfilling work, lack of leisure time and misplaced values; money, possessions and accolades.
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What does Thoreau mean by "quiet desperation" in Walden? According to Henry David Thoreau in Walden, why were modern society's problems solved by simplicity? What is the significance...
