“Thoreau was an idiot.”
“Concord is a classic land. The names of Emerson and Thoreau and Channing and Hawthorne are associated with the fields and forests and lakes and rivers of this township.”
“And after reading Thoreau I felt how much I have lost by leaving nature out of my life.”
“One of the strongest of contemporary conventions is that of comparing to Thoreau every writer who has been as far out of the house as the mailbox.”
“I wouldn't know where to start.""He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to." "Thoreau?""Harry Emerson Fosdick...”
“The notion that obedience dehumanizes those who render it is a popular cry of the philosophers of radical individualism, such as Thoreau, who are so important to America's myth of itself.”