Henry David Thoreau

Vegetarian ideas figured prominently in 19th-century intellectual circles. Though practicing vegetarians remained outside the mainstream, as they do today, vegetarianism itself was intriguing, its arguments compelling. Thoreau, for instance, was not a strict vegetarian, but he did believe that the vegetarian diet was “the destiny of the human race.” Not because animals were cute and fuzzy and therefore ought to be saved from brutality, but because they were dirty and difficult and expensive. --Stefany Anne Golberg, Vegetable Stand: Stop paying taxes? Escape to the woods? Sit in? Why not go vegetarian instead? The Smart Set, January 26, 2009 (via Arts & Letters Daily)


One of those things is that nature isn’t over there, in Yosemite or Yellowstone, but right here in your day-to-day life. Another is that the idea of thrift, which so often feels grim and, well, just plain un-American, can actually be exciting if it frees us to better spend our time. --David Gessner, Wild and Crazy Guy, The New York Times, April 16, 2009, review of The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant, by Robert Sullivan

Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and Transcendentalism, by David M. Robinson, American Literary Scholarship, 1998