Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts. He was an American writer, philosopher, abolitionist, and tax resister. In 1845 Thoreau built a small home on Walden Pond. He lived there close to nature for more than two years and recounted his experience in his book Walden: or, Life in the Woods, published in 1854. Thoreau died of tuberculosis in 1862.
— From February 2013excerpted from
Walden
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.
February 2013On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. . . . I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was.
December 1983Request a free trial, and we’ll mail you a print copy of this month’s issue. Plus you’ll get full online access — including 50 years of archives. Request A Free Issue