Book Review: Thumbing Through Thoreau

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Today I shall review a book unlike any other book I had reviewed from before. It is a book full of quotes, full of wisdom. It is called Thumbing Through Thoreau: A Book of Quotations. I received this book for review by Tribute Publishing Company.

Here is the description of the book:

On July 4, 1845, when Henry David Thoreau moved into his cabin on the shores of Walden Pond, he was probably unaware that his abode in the woods, and the impact and influence of that endeavor, would forever echo through time. Thoreau was an uncompromising idealist; an ardent maverick who criticized his fellow man. He urged that men and women ought to live more simply, and more deliberately. "The mass of men," he famously wrote, "lead lives of quite desperation." Yet the scope of Thoreau's message is much wider than social criticism. He speaks of spiritual transcendence in Nature and the unbounded potential of the individual. Thoreau is a dreamer and he speaks to dreamers. In a word, shun dogmatism and demagoguery; see beyond the immediate conventional religious explanations to reap a higher understanding. In our commodified contemporary American society, with the rise of religious intolerance and fundamentalism, materialism and mass consumerism, Thoreau's message is needed now more than ever. Author Kenny Luck has thumbed through Thoreau's voluminous journals, correspondences and other publications to make this the most comprehensive collection of Thoreau aphorisms available

When I received this book review, I was worried that I might not be able to review it. I mean what are the odds of reviewing a book that is only full of quotes. So I started reading it anyways. The minute I started reading the book, I started to write down how I felt about it and what are the pros and cons. Mostly  pros.

As you read from the description, the book is full of quotes from 1845. The date itself brought excitement to me because I love history and dates. Reading things from the past helps you to travel through time for free and expand your experiences without moving.

To be honest with you for most of the quotes, I did not understand the meaning of it, which is a good thing because this helped me to create my own meaning to each quote. Usually when you are reading something that is complicated, you start to form your own "in between the lines", but don’t worry not all the quotes were hard to understand.

The quotes were wonderful to read. There were 3 sections in the book: 1-society and government 2- spiritually and love 3-love. In each quote there was a deep meaning and a meaning that sometimes takes lots of time to realize it. The quotes could relate to us now, even though there written 2 centuries ago.

Now I am going to share with you my favourite quotes.

"We look upward for inspiration… the sky is always ready to answer to our moods…"

"No thinker can afford to overlook the influence of the moon any more than the astronomer can."

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the dirctions of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

Here is the trailer of the book:

Tata for now