Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862):
A Bio Page for students, with some nice quotes
Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise to noon, rapt in revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, while the birds sang or flitted noiseless through the house until by sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’ s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any of the work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works.’ – ‘Sounds,’ Walden
I notced the link and was drawn to it as I am reading “World’s End” – The Lanny Budd series by Upton Sinclair. (see next entry) People like Thoreau come up and hundreds of others. It’s is history in easy doses. I will keep linking various people as I read, we will get through the whole of the last century that way.