"Philosophy of Thoreau" "Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away" (Thoreau 345). In Walden, Henry David Thoreau bases his philosophy of the true meaning of life on the importance of self-reliance to gain self-fulfillment, the …showed first 75 words of 1049 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1049 total…clutters that are blocking our way to freedom. He believes that we live "lives of quiet desperation" (111), conforming to what society has given us as the only path to success, and that we must skew away from our hopeless lives and live as one with nature to achieve self-fulfillment; only then can we know that when we die, we have at least actually lived. Works Cited Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1962.