Henry Thoreau

Several years ago, I made a Henry Thoreau collage for Paul Harmon. I hope I don't need to explain that the figures around the portrait of Thoreau represent how things turn out with humans who would espouse Thoreau's ideas, and those who would reject them:

"What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I."

'The State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength."


"THERE WILL NEVER BE A REALLY FREE AND ENLIGHTENED STATE UNTIL THE STATE COMES TO RECOGNIZE THE INDIVIDUAL AS A HIGHER AND INDEPENDENT POWER, FROM WHICH ALL ITS OWN POWER AND AUTHORITY ARE DERIVED, AND TREATS THE INDIVIDUALLY ACCORDINGLY."

"I have read in a Hindoo book that 'there was a king's son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his father's ministers having discovered him revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul,' continues the Hindoo philosopher, 'from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it and it knows itself to be BRAHME'."

"Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous."

"I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject."

If you clicked on the following, you could enlarge it to the point where you could read the words on the original collage, but I just made the words more clear above, for the blog -- But still lack knowledge about how to create various size types -- like th press-on letters of the original!