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Unexpected, ongoing medical issues dictate that my on-line activity must be reduced. (Sorry.)
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Activity Summary
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Reviews Written: 170
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Member Visits: 9,438
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Total Visits: 218,063
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About henry_thoreau
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(Some of) my opinions categorized:
Since retirement in my forties, I've been living in my own little "Walden."
When I registered with Epinions years ago, who knew I'd be forever stuck with one indelible ID? [I was in a "literary" mood that day, and I even considered entering "aldous_huxley" or "george_orwell"!] Oh well. I've concluded to content myself with this persona. Besides, at least Thoreau did manifest one of my incurable characteristics: a lifelong love of daylong leisure!
Epinions name: "henry_thoreau"
Real name: Michael/Mike
Location: metro Kansas City (eastern Kansas)
Age: 54.
Gender/orientation/complexion: Male/straight/white (and respectful of everybody's rights and feelings).
Marital status: Divorced; no dependents--'ceptin' dogs, now and again. (Pretty well set in my ways.)
Occupation: "Early retirement." [Paid my dues then bailed out of Purgatory in 2002 at age 48. Can now live frugally and happily for the duration.]
Preoccupations: Watching AT&T "U-verse" programming (especially science, biographies, history, documentaries and world news) and home-theater DVD's; web surfing; collecting/listening to music--including pop "oldies" and "classical" (virtually all periods, genres, and composers); writing; reading (both printed and audio books); bicycling around town (instead of always driving); hiking forests; fishing lakes (occasionally); dogs of all sizes (my best friend Abbey, a golden retriever, died at age fourteen-and-a-half on August 14, 2007); videogaming (occasionally); Dr. Joel Fuhrman's Eat to Live lifelong diet; too many "home gym" machines!
"A wise man is he who does not grieve for the things that he has not, but rejoices for those that he has."
~Epictetus
Sayings of Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862)
"What is it to be born free and not to live free?"
"The life which men praise and regard as successful
is but one kind."
“This is the only way, we say; but there are
as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one center.”
“Is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life?”
“Solitude is not measured by the miles of space
that intervene between a man and his fellows.”
"We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers."
"A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful
in a man's life as in a book."
"What are threescore years and ten
hurriedly and coarsely lived
to moments of divine leisure?"
“I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious,
and yet not spend his time well.”
"Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed
to employ them in throwing stones over a wall,
and then in throwing them back,
merely that they might earn their wages.
But many are no more worthily employed now."
"Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while
to buy my baskets, I studied rather
how to avoid the necessity of selling them."
"If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons
to society, as most appear to do,
I am sure that for me
there would be nothing left worth living for."
Men labor under a mistake.
By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity,
they are employed laying up treasures
which moth and rust will corrupt
and thieves break through and steal.
It is a fool's life, as they will find
when they get to the end of it, if not before.
"Shall we always study to obtain more of these things,
and not sometimes to be content with less?"
"I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned
by the habit of attending to trivial things,
so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality."
"Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting,
but also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering,
of that which we should never have been conscious of,
certainly not in our waking hours."
"It is never too late to give up our prejudices."
"If I am thus seemingly cold
compared with my companion's warm,
who knows but mine is a less transient glow,
a steadier and more equable heat,
like that of the earth in spring,
in which the flowers spring and expand."
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