The Quotable Thoreau

The Quotable Thoreau

Author: Jeffrey S Cramer

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-04-11

Total Pages: 539

ISBN-13: 1400838002

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A comprehensive and authoritative collection of Thoreau quotations on more than 150 subjects, from beauty to wisdom Few writers are more quotable than Henry David Thoreau. His books, essays, journals, poems, letters, and unpublished manuscripts contain an inexhaustible treasure of epigrams and witticisms, from the famous ("The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation") to the obscure ("Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining") and the surprising ("I would exchange my immortality for a glass of small beer this hot weather"). The Quotable Thoreau, the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of Thoreau quotations ever assembled, gathers more than 2,000 memorable passages from this iconoclastic American author, social reformer, environmentalist, and self-reliant thinker. Including Thoreau's thoughts on topics ranging from sex to solitude, manners to miracles, government to God, life to death, and everything in between, the book captures Thoreau's profundity as well as his humor ("If misery loves company, misery has company enough"). Drawing primarily on The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, published by Princeton University Press, The Quotable Thoreau is thematically arranged, fully indexed, richly illustrated, and thoroughly documented. For the student of Thoreau, it will be invaluable. For those who think they know Thoreau, it will be a revelation. And for the reader seeking sheer pleasure, it will be a joy. Over 2,000 quotations on more than 150 subjects Richly illustrated with historic photographs and drawings Thoreau on himself and his contemporaries Thoreau's contemporaries on Thoreau Biographical time line Appendix of misquotations and misattributions Fully indexed Suggestions for further reading


The Days of Henry Thoreau

The Days of Henry Thoreau

Author: Walter Harding

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-12-08

Total Pages: 535

ISBN-13: 1400875560

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Henry David Thoreau is generally remembered as the author of Walden and "Civil Disobedience," a recluse of the woods and a political protester who once went to jail. To his contemporaries he was a minor disciple of Emerson; he has since joined the ranks of America's most respected and beloved writers. Few, however, really know the complexity of the man they revere—wanderer and scholar, naturalist and humorist, teacher and surveyor, abolitionist and poet, Transcendentalist and anthropologist, inventor and social critic, and, above all, individualist. In this widely acclaimed biography, the eminent Thoreau scholar Walter Harding presents all of these Thoreaus. Scholars will find here the culmination of a lifetime of research and study, meticulously documented, while general readers will find an absorbing story of a remarkable man. Writing with supreme lucidity, Harding has marshaled all the facts so as best to “let them speak for themselves.” Thoreau’s thoughtfulness and stubbornness, his more than ordinarily human amalgam of the earthy and sublime, his unquenchable vitality emerge to the reader as they did to his own family, friends, and critics. The new afterword evaluates new scholarship about Thoreau. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


Thoreau's God

Thoreau's God

Author: Richard Higgins

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2024-11-19

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 0226836452

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Meditative reflections on the great spiritual seeker’s deeply felt experience of the divine. Henry David Thoreau’s spiritual life is a riddle. Thoreau’s passionate critique of formal religion is matched only by his rapturous descriptions of encounters with the divine in nature. He fled the church only to pursue a deeper communion with a presence he felt at the heart of the universe. He called this illimitable presence many names, but he often called it God. In Thoreau’s God, Richard Higgins invites seekers—religious or otherwise—to walk with the great Transcendentalist through a series of meditations on his spiritual life. Thoreau offers us no creed, but his writings encourage reflection on how to live, what to notice, and what to love. Though his quest was deeply personal, Thoreau devoted his life to communicating his experience of an infinite, wild, life-giving God. By recovering this vital thread in Thoreau’s life and work, Thoreau’s God opens the door to a new understanding of an original voice in American religion that speaks to spiritual seekers today.


Perfectly Miserable

Perfectly Miserable

Author: Sarah Payne Stuart

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2015-06-02

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1594633908

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A wryly comic memoir that examines the pillars of New England WASP culture—class, history, family, money, envy, perfection, and, of course, real estate—through the lens of mothers and daughters. At eighteen, Sarah Payne Stuart fled her mother and all the other disapproving mothers of her too-perfect hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, only to return years later when she had children of her own. Whether to defy the previous generation or finally earn their approval and enter their ranks, she hurled herself into upper-crust domesticity full throttle. In the twenty years Stuart spent back in her hometown—in a series of ever more magnificent houses in ever grander neighborhoods—she was forced to connect with the cultural tradition of guilt and flawed parenting of a long legacy of local, literary women from Emerson’s wife, to Hawthorne’s, to the most famous and imposing of them all, Louisa May Alcott’s iconic, guilt-tripping Marmee. When Stuart’s own mother dies, she realizes that there is no one left to approve or disapprove. And so, with her suddenly grown children fleeing as she herself once did, Stuart leaves her hometown for the final time, bidding good-bye to the cozy ideals invented for her by Louisa May Alcott so many years ago, which may or may not ever have been based in reality.


Dark Thoreau

Dark Thoreau

Author: Richard Bridgman

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 1982-01-01

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780803261921

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Henry David Thoreau has suffered from a largely uncritical admiration of his roles as naturalist, economist, political theorist, and expository writer. The evidence this book presents substantially modifies our understanding of his performance of those roles. It draws heavily on the largely unknown territory of Thoreau's seven thousand pages of journals as well as his poetry, while at the same time subjecting passages from such familiar work as Walden to fresh interpretation. Dark Thoreau argues that Thoreau elected to associate himself with the American romantic movement as a form of rebellion from a Concord from which he was alienated. However, the affirmations of transcendentalism were often unavailable to him, so that he (and his writing) suffered the tensions of disharmony: animal life proved savage and sensual, the primitive wilderness alarming, and after the Indian failed him, only the militant John Brown furnished a surrogate Thoreau could enthusiastically support. Thoreau's frustrations manifested themselves not only in passive lamentations but also in expressions of aggression. The terms in which he cast his anger were often imagistically violent, involving a desire to injure, suffocate, drown, and blow up that which he despised. Even his most affirmative assertions about the world were likely to be tinged with doubt. Our preoccupation with Thoreau as the symbol of man in harmony with a benign wilderness has tended to divert us from the full dimensions of his mind. The present account of the dark Thoreau will require subsequent readers to add his savagery and pessimism to their sense of the man, to complicate this saint of the woods by accepting his doubt, his anger, and his fallibility.


Solid Seasons

Solid Seasons

Author: Jeffrey S. Cramer

Publisher: Catapult

Published: 2020-07-07

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1640093834

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A thoughtfully researched, movingly presented dual–biography of two iconic American writers, each trying to find the ideal friend with whom they could share their journey through our imperfect world. Any biography that concentrates on either Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson tends to diminish the other figure, but in Solid Seasons both men remain central and equal. Through several decades of writing, friendship remained a primary theme for them both. Collecting extracts from the letters and journals of both men, as well as words written about them by their contemporaries, Jeffrey S. Cramer beautifully illustrates the full nature of their twenty–five–year dialogue. Biographers like to point at the crisis in their friendship, focusing particularly on Thoreau's disappointment in Emerson—rarely on Emerson's own disappointment in Thoreau—and leaving it there, a friendship ruptured. But the solid seasons remained, as is evident when, in 1878, Anne Burrows Gilchrist, the English writer and friend of Whitman, visited Emerson. She wrote that his memory was failing "as to recent names and topics but as is usual in such cases all the mental impressions that were made when he was in full vigour remain clear and strong." As they chatted, Emerson called to his wife, Lidian, in the next room, "What was the name of my best friend?" "Henry Thoreau," she answered. "Oh, yes," Emerson repeated. "Henry Thoreau."


An Introduction to Global Studies

An Introduction to Global Studies

Author: Patricia J. Campbell

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-09-13

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 1444329588

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, An Introduction to Global Studies presents readers with a solid introduction to the complex, interconnected forces and issues confronting today's globalized world. Introduces readers to major theories, key terms, concepts, and notable theorists Equips readers with the basic knowledge and conceptual tools necessary for thinking critically about the complex issues facing the global community Includes a variety of supplemental features to facilitate learning and enhance readers' understanding of the material