Biography

(1817 -- 1863) The facts of Thoreau's life are appropriately spare for one who wrote, "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand. . . ." He graduated from Harvard College in 1837; made a living primarily by surveying land and helping with the family pencil-making and ground lead business, though he taught school for several years when he was in his 20s and lectured from time to time from 1838 until 1860. As he recommended to others, Thoreau actively sought this simplicity in his circumstances in order to enjoy extraordinary richness in his intellectual and spiritual life, and his writings testify to his succes

Q: There are times when I practice these fundamentals, yet see little difference in the way I feel or act. Perhaps I need some esoteric good news for those times.

Thoreau's Answer: If you have built castles in the air, your work need not belost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Q: We are beginning to see the need for a constructive kind of self-influence, so will you please help us in this area?

A: I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest art.

Q: I don't have any large personal problems, but am puzzled by life in general. For example, why are we here on earth, and what am I supposed to be doing with myself?

A: We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it, a little?

Q: What is human ignorance?

A: By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law.

Q: I am no longer satisfied with the shallow answers to life, which society offers so freely. The disasters we see all around us are evidence enough of society's failure. If it takes an independent search to break out of the desert, I am willing to make it. What must I know at the start?

A: If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded by life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.

Q: I would like to understand the necessity of exploring these new principles. Perhaps all we need is a greater effort to make our established ideas work more efficiently.

A: What is the use of going right over the old track again? . . . You must make tracks unto the unknown.

Q: So what is the right and intelligent course of action for us when it comes to our own self-deliverance?

A: When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letters of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God -- none of the servants.

Q: I was once advised to unlearn many of my acquired ideas which swelled me up with pride. How would you confirm the necessity for this?

A: Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

Q: I want to live my own life, but people think you are cold and selfish unless you join their silly activities. I suspect this may be false guilt on my part.

A: I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.

Q: Mr. Thoreau, in the fewest words, what describes unawake people?

A: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Q: How do our daily actions connect with these higher truths?

A: To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

Q: I know that esoteric teachings stress the need for faithful self-examination, but what is its purpose?

A: If by patience, if by watching, I can secure one new ray of light, can feel myself elevated . . . shall I not watch ever?

Q: Esotericism cautions us against getting carried away by excited emotions which masquerade as feelings of joy. Will you please provide an example of legitimate emotions?

A: When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime.

Q: How can we prevent the loss of strength and energy?

Thoreau's Answer: Our life is frittered away by detail . . . Simplify, simplify.

Q: What is the healthy answer to the problem of extravagance, to wanting and buying things that won't add an inch to our contentment?

A: The man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

Q: How can we see this newness in our daily lives?

A: Only that day dawns to which we are awake

Q: Thousands of organizations around the globe are trying to make it a better world, but not much changes. Why is this?

A: There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Q: What should we know about ourselves in order to live with more rightness?

A: As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way, governments, society, and even the sun and moon and stars.

Q: Since carefully observing the secret motives of people, as the mystics have suggested we do, I am beginning to see how few people have really liberated themselves from themselves.

A: There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

Q: What are the basic rules for winning a life of natural ease?

A: I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely.

Q: The mystics say we should never hesitate to give ourselves surprises and shocks, for they aid in self-awakening. What kind of a self-question can make us think twice?

A: Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises?

Q: Please summarize the philosophy of the person who has resolved to escape the human jungle?

A: I did not wish to live what was not life.

Q: I would like to feel I have something worthwhile to do with my life.

A: Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself . . . The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour . . . some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, and not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within . . . to a higher life.

Q: Since self-honesty is a first principle of mysticism, let me speak my mind. I am tired of having others tell me what too do, what to think, what to believe, and what to follow. I want to follow MYSELF, but I need more information.

A: A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.

Q: I am aware that we must make the venture towards the higher life, but half the time we are not sure of what we are doing.

A: If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them -- that it was a vain endeavor?

Q: Sometimes we feel that the only good things are those we can see or touch. What is the answer to this misleading temptation?

A: The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

Q: How can we put more life into our living?

A: The millions are awake enough for physical labor, but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive . . . We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

Q: I have been both startled and helped by realizing how much we live from unrealistic self-pictures of ourselves. How would you describe a man living like this?

A: The slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself.

Q: I am highly encouraged by realizing that we can be in the world but not snared by it.

A: Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Q: Can you give us another example of a cheerful fact?

A: Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

Q: I belong to small group which studies these principles. May I have an idea for discussion at our next meeting?

A: Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Q: I feel like I often grab hold of the world when I should let it go.

Thoreau's Answer: With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and from their consequences, and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.