Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your
affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a
thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen,
and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. . . .
Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it
be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred
dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.
. . .
If we respected only what is inevitable and has a
right to be, music and poetry would resound
along the streets. When we are unhurried and
wise, we perceive that only great and worthy
things have any permanent and absolute exis-
tence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but
the shadow of the reality. . . .
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink
at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and
detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides
away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper;
fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.
I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of
the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I
was not as wise as the day I was born. . . .
—Walden (published 1854)
“May be true what I had heard,
Earth’s a howling wilderness
Truculent with fraud and force,”
Said I, strolling through the pastures,
And along the riverside.
Caught among the blackberry vines,
Feeding on the Ethiops sweet,
Pleasant fancies overtook me:
I said, “What influence me preferred
Elect to dreams thus beautiful?”
The vines replied, “And didst thou deem
No wisdom to our berries went?”
—“Berrying”
(published 1846)
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Henry David Thoreau believed that people must be free
to act by their own idea of right and wrong. His work
helped shape many reform movements of his time.
In Walden, published in 1854, Thoreau wrote about living
alone in the woods. Thoreau urged people to reject the
greed and materialism that was affecting Americans in
their daily lives.
THINKING CRITICALLY
THINKING CRITICALLY
1. Comparing and Contrasting What does each selec-
tion reveal about habits and attitudes in 1850s
America? Cite details to help explain your answers.
SEE SKILLBUILDER HANDBOOK, PAGE R8.
2.
Use the links for American Literature to research and
create an annotated book of famous transcendentalist
quotations. Well-known examples might include:
Emerson’s “Hitch your wagon to a star,” or Thoreau’s
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
The quotations you choose for each writer should con-
tain information on the source of the quotation and a
short description of how each quotation expresses
transcendentalist beliefs.
IINTERNET ACTIVITY CLASSZONE.COM
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Emerson’s poem “Berrying” expresses his
celebration of the truth found in nature and
in personal emotion and imagination.
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Reforming American Society 247
