Henry David Thoreau
Click to emvastify 1817 On this day was born Henry David Thoreau (d. May 6, 1862), American tax resister, anti-war activist, essayist and author, most famous for Walden, his book about voluntary simplicity and living close to Nature, and for his influential treatise on civil disobedience (Civil Disobedience), which inspired Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King ...
Emerson visited Thoreau in prison when Thoreau was inside for refusal to pay the proportion of his tax that would pay for war. Emerson asked, "Henry, what are you doing in here?!" The author of Walden looked at the great transcendental essayist and asked, "No, Ralph, the question is, what are you doing out there?" ...
Categories: civil-disobedience, literature, usa, voluntary-simplicity, biography, history
Pip Wilson posted item above at 3:05 PM | Permalink
2 Comments:
That great quote from Thoreau, asking why Emerson wasn't in jail too, is fantastic - and not true! It's one of those legends that have survived partly because we think it ought to be true.
Thanx,Rob. I'd like to get to the bottom of it. It's easy to find the story on the Net, but not the refutation of it.
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