Tag Archives: Henry David Thoreau

Listen to Reason? The Laws of God vs. the Laws of Man

Below are some public mug shots of Amish men serving brief sentences in a Kentucky jail. Their crime? They refused to put yellow reflectors on their horse-driven buggies when using public roads. Their religion does not permit them to display … Continue reading

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Thoreau 2.1: Jay Shafer’s 100 Sq. Ft. Home

I find Jay Shafer’s Thoreau-like experiment elegant and inspiring. Who needs a mortgage if you have creativity?

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Christopher Hitchens, Henry David Thoreau, and Peitho

Christopher Hitchens was recently interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, and offered an interesting tidbit on a rhetorical strategy that tends to work for him: [W]hen I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I’m talking to people. It … Continue reading

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A great Henry David Thoreau quote

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what … Continue reading

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Henry David Thoreau on not reacting to every insistent demand

This Henry David Thoreau quote comes from the second chapter of Walden (1854): If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind … Continue reading

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Spring is Approaching

Are you noticing? Here’s a bit from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden  (1854, chapter 17): The brooks sing carols and glees to the spring. The marsh hawk, sailing low over the meadow, is already seeking the first slimy life that awakes. … Continue reading

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Lancaster, California: A City without a Bookstore

Lancaster, California’s only general purpose bookstore—serving a city of close to 200,000 people—closed a couple of weeks ago. It was a Waldenbooks, and, ironically, it shut down within about a week of the city’s mayor—R. Rex Parris—making this comment to a gathering of 160 … Continue reading

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Quote of the Day

Henry David Thoreau: Let us settle ourselves, and work, and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through … Continue reading

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Quote for a Sunday

Henry David Thoreau (from Walden ): 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, … Continue reading

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Garrison Keillor Wants to Be Alone

At Salon.com this week, Garrison Keillor writes on the bliss of solitude: New York is a fine place in which to be alone. To walk into a little cafe with an armload of newspapers and sit at the counter and … Continue reading

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“What is called resignation is confirmed desperation” (Henry David Thoreau)

Escaping from freedom into the ecstasy of resignation and submission (1967): Or another way to look at it: “Atheism is a ferocious system, that leaves nothing above us to excite awe, nor around us to awaken tenderness” (R. Hall).

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Quote of the Day

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote: “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”

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State of New Mexico Tells a Religious Photographer: You Have to Take Pictures at a Gay Commitment Ceremony!

I am a strong supporter of gay marriage, but I think that the below story is an outrageous violation, by authorities in New Mexico, of conscientious religious objection. According to the Associated Press this weekend: A professional photographer who refused … Continue reading

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Fleeing Obama’s America? Obsidian Wings Deconstructs the Inane Libertarian “Going Galt” Ayn Rand Movement

Some Ayn Rand enthusiasts have it in their heads that they are indispensible to the running of the global economy, and are now speaking of “Going Galt”—taking leave of our now thoroughly collectivized—and Obamaized—civilization, and taking up residence together in … Continue reading

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The Passion of the Agnostic? “The Death of Socrates” by Jacques-Louis David

From Plato’s Apology (Socrates speaking): “I am wiser than this man: neither of us knows anything that is really worth knowing, but he thinks that he has knowledge when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think … Continue reading

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“Like a Tortoise Retracting Its Limbs”: The Bhagavad Gita as Literature, and Its Doctrine of the Two Selves

One of the most enduring pieces of world literature is the Bhaghavad Gita. And one of the keys to reading the Gita is to understand its doctrine of the two selves.  In the Gita the two selves are: the “big … Continue reading

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