Basically, how far would you go for your ideals and if you are not willing to give something up than you do not actually believe in the cause

HDT believes in direct action and is annoyed by people who say they support a cause but refuse to act upon it

He is saying we have to first think about what we morally believe than what the government tells us is right to do

Pre-civil war but a time of high tension between slaves and slave owners

Ties back to 'Visitors' when he was talking about what a terrible host was but how he always sought for his guest to leave with a spiritual fullness

If you are poor you can learn to live without the material things and he thinks that is great

Here he returns to his rant about materialism and encourages the reader to rid themselves of the things they think they need but only want and search for only the necessities to happiness

'Love your like, poor at is it' tbh might be my new catchphrase

rude and more than a little self-indulgent

As in, he tried to reason with them and help them out but they are too dumb to understand it

Henry boi is being very insensitive and blind to the experience of others by pursuing that this Irish man is poor because he drinks coffee, basically. This is a part of the book where we cannot ignore Henry's privilege because it blinds him to the fact that these people work hard and are still poor and are doing their best and that his way of life can't work for some people

It began to rain

His description of the pond and it being so calm, glass-like, deep, and seemingly infinite in the calendar of man prod at some kind of deeper symbolism and joins with an earlier annotation I did where he thinks the pond is the center of the entire experience.

He was never bothered by anyone other than the 'mindless drones of society' molested meant something different then

Here he is referring to his 'civil disobedience' values where he didn't pay the tax because he didn't agree with people return runaway slaves

Henry was an abolitionist and this suggests he worked on the underground railroad.

He accentuates the point that these people have accents to show them as removed from deep-thinking society

Though he admires the man for his simplicity and agreeability, he is frustrated by the shortcoming that he is satisfied with his work and does not look to gain anything further. Henry views this as the man having childish innocence and being like a baby in the true ways of society

He is more concerned with connecting with his guests on a spiritual level than being a good host to them

He is concerned that people would rather care for their fields than to tinker with the state of mankind

According to an inflation calculator, 8.72 in the time this book was released would be 241.29 in today's money

'industrious farmer' in latin

Here he uses a double negative to underline his awareness hat the task means nothing to the universe but something to him

Not to e racist or anything but this is such a long sentance

More Greek Myths

He has a very positive view on nature at the mo, very contrasting to 'Into The Wild's' look on it as in that book there was always the underlying current of danger and the fact that the main character, Chris, SPOILER, is dead because of nature. We can assume Henry doesn't face any perilous times in the woods, which makes the lesson seem less genuine and not as hard-won

@Ava_Boudreault looks like a musty cheese. I understand what he is saying here - sometimes it feels like I see the same people so much we run out of important things to talk about

Sis, a mood. T. died childless and wifeless which isn't necessarily a bad thing but goes along with this. through there are also rumours that he was gay so that could be it

Hopefully this is him trying to be funny, but ya never know..

As I said in a previous annotation, this distance was a lot further back in the day when they had to walk or take horses. This book came out in 1854 so they didn't have cars yet, not even rich people. A mile still isn't, to us, all that much of a walk, but we live in a small town with paved streets where we are used to things not being close together. In an unfamiliar albeit gorgeous and at the moment seemingly not perilous woods, the distance could seem a lot further. Walking a mile in the woods is different than walking a mile down the clear-cut road.

The lake is a central part of these woods and in comparing himself to it he is showing that he has cemented his place there as well

"(of a thing) pleasant or agreeable because suited to one's taste or inclination"

He capitalizes nature as though it is a sentient being worthy of being a possessive noun. I believe this is to show his respect for it and to personify it.

'Where I Lived' Alludes to the fact that we are going to learn about his beginnings, while the question of 'What I Lived For' is a little bit harder to understand. It is answered in this chapter by what he doesn't live for, such as society and what he views as materialistic ideals or ownership and want, and is also answered by what he proclaims to learn in the woods, i.e a sense of freedom, a way to go back to nature

a 164 year old mood

A reference to the Greek myth about the Myrmidons, an army of men made by Zeus out of a colony of ants. Also reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite books, We Are The Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson. I couldn't find the whole paragraph, but I found the end bit on Goodreads : "“Your entire self-worth is predicated upon the belief that you matter, that you matter to the universe. But you don't. Because we are the ants.” "

This is continually quoted as one of the most famous excerpts from this book. Walden thinks that, by going into the woods and renouncing society, he has overcome materialism.

In the history of our country it seems that those 'one in a million' are the straight white men who rely on slaves or their own inheritance to live and then do things like disappear into the woods or create the electoral congress

I feel this book is a less-sincere Into The Wild in that these two men go into nature looking to return to it and find something in it, but one does it all the way i.e burns all his money and identifying cards, breaks away from society, wanders around America with only what he can carry and learns to live off of his knowledge of the wilderness and what he finds, and the other is Henry David Thoreau

He is roughly saying that he feels at one with nature and his ancestors, though really his ancestors probably lived in England or something along the lines and were well off as they could be and it is very unlikely they lived in a shack in the woods. It is his idealized version of what he thought life in the olden days of pioneering was like, bar the fact that he isn't afraid of the wild animals as much or starvation and having no way to return to any sort of civilization because England is across and uncrossable sea. This part really does strike me as ridiculous and reminds me of a lot of hippies today talking about going back to the old ways and such where, in reality, there has never been old days like people imagine. Every year that goes by we are safer from diseases and the threats of the food chain, and even all the way back then he was better of than the true pioneers who literally would've killed to be in his situation. He has more tools and more means of survival than they ever did.

He makes a lot of references to Greek mythology

This very flowery and not actually clever to anyone who knows Reek mythology because Atlas was a Titan forced to hold the sky after the Titan war

Did he really, or did he come from money that he refused to use?

He never actually bought a house because it was to material and not what he really wanted

He thinks of houses as a sort of base, a starting point where you can go to recharge not as a home really. The difference between a house and a home

Today, this distance isn't nearly as long