Transcendentalist grand-pooh bah. . .discussed limitations of human senses and how civilization robs you of some (or most) of your humanity. . .wrote 'Civil Disobedience' which inspired Gandhi and Dr. King. . .certainly a bigge and might be underrated. . .give it a few centuries. . .

Self-deceiver. Dreamer. Grossly overrated.

I hate Thoreau...you have to read about his stupid pond and how society is just awful...but did he stay there out in the woods for the rest of his life? No...so why do I have to read about it? Blah

Poet, Trancedentalist, Pragmatist, nature lover. Strong on indvidual freedom and against slavery. Wrongly labled an anachist, called himself a 'liberal' and a pacifist. Rejected nearly all nationalist beliefs, favors oligachy. Belived that God is trancendent and imminent, but wrongly called a panthiest(someone who rejects the belief that God is trancendent and immenent, and sometimes that he only exists only in physical mass) because he saw nature as being part of God. Wanted to escape the pressurs of life and live simply.

Simplicity and Civil Disobediance. A sensible person.

Nope not even close to a true philosophy.

I'm assigned to read Walden in my Honors English class this year, and all I can say is that, while Thoureau occasionally had a good point to make, in general he was nuts! I mean I respect his general philosophy and the influence he has had on 20th-century (and now 21st-century) society, which is why I give him a 2 instead of a 1, but really. Read one chapter of that horrifically boring book called Walden and you'll agree with me that Thoreau was an arrogant, hypocritical, absurdly misanthropic lunatic. Living in the woods for two years with very little exposure to other human beings destroyed his mind so that by the time he wrote about it he only had small traces of sanity left. Why do I say this? Just the way he talks about certain things- some statements, such as the one in this week's chapter, "I didn't realize how thirsty the wall was" (or something along those lines), may sound sometimes like mere poetic metaphors, but it's sometimes dubious wether he's being poetic or schizophrenic. And no, I don't think it's a matter of depreciating it in high school like Wiggum referred to- hell, my favorite book is "Finnegans Wake" which I've read all the way through twice. I'm not saying I'm totally against Thoreau. By all means read "Civil Disobedience", but "Walden" is simply a BAD book full of redundant, hypocritical rants and misanthropic nonsense. In his theories there are elements of a reasonable philosophy, but in the execution and written descriptions of those philosophies there is nothing more than eloquent babble. You know the theory that if you set a monkey in front of a typewriter eventually it will write "Hamlet"? Well, in the years between learning to type and typing "Hamlet", that monkey was writing "Walden".

A writer of many great poems.

Thoreau was just an interesting guy. “Walden,” which I need to re-read since I don’t think I fully appreciated it in high school, is deservedly a classic. Just the idea of taking off to live in the woods, to live deliberately, to simplify... It’s even more compelling today than it was in the 19th century (as long as you don’t think of it in a Ted Kaczynski kind of way). If Thoreau was feeling overwhelmed by all the rat-race, materialistic crap he had to deal with in the mid-1800s, just think how overwhelmed he’d be today. It’s a shame we tend to read a book like “Walden,” agree completely with all the points about materialism and the need for simplification, then put the book down and go right back to living the exact same way, getting 100 e-mails a day, stressing about the Nasdaq falling, talking on cell phones as we’re stuck in traffic...