Q0079

Henry David Thoreau

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Thinker Henry David Thoreau
School Transcendentalism
Source Walden
Theme Awakening
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Walden, within the tradition of Transcendentalism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of awakening, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Henry David Thoreau's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Henry David Thoreau. (n.d.). The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0079

MLA: Henry David Thoreau. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0079.

Chicago: Henry David Thoreau. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0079.

Same thinker

More from Henry David Thoreau

  1. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.
  2. If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
  3. Simplify, simplify.
  4. The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it.
  5. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

All quotations by Henry David Thoreau

Same theme

More on awakening

  1. The beginning of philosophy is a consciousness of one's own weakness and inability concerning necessary things.
  2. Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
  3. Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
  4. That thou art.
  5. Bodhi originally has no tree; the bright mirror is not a stand. Fundamentally there is not a single thing — where could dust alight?

Browse the awakening theme