Thoreau was of French Huguenot and Scottish ancestry, but accented his name on the first syllable. He was educated at Concord Academy and Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1837. He taught school, lectured, served as surveyor for the town of Concord, did odd jobs, worked as Ralph Waldo Emerson's handyman, and helped him edit the Dial, for which he wrote extensively. His major business always was writing undistinguished poetry and superb prose (most of it in his journal). Today he stands in the front rank of the classical American writers.

Thoreau is considered one of the most influential figures in American thought and literature. A supreme individualist, he championed the human spirit against materialism and social conformity. His most famous book, Walden (1854), is an eloquent account of his experiment in near-solitary living in close harmony with nature; it is also an expression of his transcendentalist philosophy.

Thoreau grew up in Concord and attended Harvard, where he was known as a serious though unconventional scholar. During his Harvard years he was exposed to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who later became his chief mentor and friend. After graduation, Thoreau worked for a time in his father’s pencil shop and taught at a grammar school, but in 1841 he was invited to live in the Emerson household, where he remained intermittently until 1843. He served as handyman and assistant to Emerson, helping to edit and contributing poetry and prose to the transcendentalist magazine, The Dial.

In 1845 Thoreau built himself a small cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord; there he remained for more than two years, “living deep and sucking out all the marrow of life.” Wishing to lead a life free of materialistic pursuits, he supported himself by growing vegetables and by surveying and doing odd jobs in the nearby village. He devoted most of his time to observing nature, reading, and writing, and he kept a detailed journal of his observations, activities, and thoughts. It was from this journal that he later distilled his masterpiece, Walden. The journal, begun in 1837, was also the source of his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), as well as of his posthumously published Excursions (1863), The Maine Woods (1864), Cape Cod (1865), and A Yankee in Canada (1866).

One of Thoreau’s most important works, the essay “Civil Disobedience” (1849), grew out of an overnight stay in prison as a result of his conscientious refusal to pay a poll tax that supported the Mexican War, which to Thoreau represented an effort to extend slavery. Thoreau’s advocacy of civil disobedience as a means for the individual to protest those actions of his government that he considers unjust has had a wide-ranging impact—on the British Labour movement, the passive resistance independence movement led by Gandhi in India, and the nonviolent civil-rights movement led by Martin Luther King in the United States.

Thoreau's stance was always much less extreme than many of his individual, sometimes inconsistent statements suggest. Theoretically, he believed that that government was best that governed least and that the ideal was no government; yet in practice he wanted the state to foster culture and education, build good roads, prevent crime, and protect wildlife. He was a pioneer ecologist and conservationist, one of the first Americans to perceive that the country's resources are not inexhaustible.

Mistrustful of institutionalism, Thoreau disliked churches and ignored most aspects of Christian theology, but he believed that "man flows at once to God when his channel of purity is open." He was a "panentheist," believing that though the entire universe exists in God, God transcends the universe and possesses consciousness and benevolence.

When Thoreau died in his native Concord on May 6, 1862, he had published only two books, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) and Walden (1854), both of which were out of print, and was little known outside the town.

Thoreau is also significant as a naturalist who emphasized the dynamic ecology of the natural world. Above all, Thoreau’s quiet, one-man revolution in living at Walden has become a symbol of the willed integrity of human beings, their inner freedom, and their ability to build their own lives.

Quotes by Thoreau

"Goodness is the only investment which never fails." -- Henry David Thoreau

Many men go fishing their entire lives without knowing it is not fish they are after." -- Henry David Thoreau

"This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction." --Henry David Thoreau

"I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn." -- Henry David Thoreau

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." Henry David Thoreau

For every ten people who are clipping at the branches of evil, you're lucky to find one who's hacking at the roots. -Henry David Thoreau

"However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts."-- Henry David Thoreau

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."~Henry David Thoreau ("Walden")

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. --Henry David Thoreau

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. - Henry David Thoreau

"The universe is wider than our views of it." -- Henry David Thoreau, 1817-62, American philosopher, author, naturalist

"I have not made my peace with God Because we have never quarreled." - Henry David Thoreau

"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us." -Henry David Thoreau

"Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet." - Henry David Thoreau

"My friend is one….who takes me for what I am." - Henry David Thoreau

"It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know." -- Henry David Thoreau

"Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid." - Henry David Thoreau

"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in milk." - Henry David Thoreau

"Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify.--Henry David Thoreau

"I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." --Henry David Thoreau

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. - Henry David Thoreau

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. --Henry David Thoreau

"In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high." - Henry David Thoreau

"Be true to your work, your word, and your friend." - Henry David Thoreau

"Our molting season, like that of the fouls, must be a crisis in our lives." -- Henry David Thoreau, "Economy," Walden: or Life in the Woods, 1854

"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something." -- Henry David Thoreau, Letter to Harrison Blake, 27 March 1848

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."--Henry David Thoreau

"Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights." - Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"