Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau was a man who expressed his beliefs of society, government, and mankind while living under his own self-criticism. ... The first paragraph of his essay, "Walking," reads "I wish to speak a word for nature, for absolute freedom and wilderness, as a contrast with a freedom and a culture merely civil-to regard man as an inhabitant, or part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. ... The most important friend he made was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson first befriended Thoreau in the fall of 1837 soon after his graduation from Harvard (Mil...

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• Grade Level: High School