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Happiness is not the key to success, success is the key to happiness
Happiness is more important than success essay 150 words
Happiness is more important than success essay 150 words
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Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it and gnaw it still” (“Henry David Thoreau”). Though the quote might be a bit out there, the point rings true; it’s important to know who you are and to do what you love. I'm going to be focusing the latter for this essay, but the two generally go hand in hand. It’s hard to do what you love if you don't even know who you are. Say you've had a really terrible day. You oversleep, because you overslept, you don't have to time to eat breakfast, on your way to work, you hit every red light, because you hit every red light you were late for work and your boss yells at you. This is just an example of a fairly bad day. There are of course worse things at can happen, but at the end of this day, I doubt you would be in a very good mood. So what do you do? You can of course take your anger out of others, but this typically isn't a very good idea for a number of …show more content…
I believe you should do what you love in life, whether you do it to relieve the stress from a bad day, or you choose to go out and make a career out of what you love to do. It will enrich your life in the long run, and make you feel like your life has meaning to it, that you actually accomplished something and didn't waste your life doing things that don't meaning anything. I'm not alone in this belief there are plenty of people that share this believe. I've already mentioned that Henry David Thoreau agreed, but there are several other people also. David Frost once said “Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally” (“David Frost”). If they believe you should do what you love and have had successful careers because they choose to do what they loved, it stands to reason that it’s a fairly good philosophy to live
How people see one another vary in numerous ways, whether it be from actions or what is gathered through spoken conversations. When an intellectual meets someone for the first time, they tend to judge by appearance before they judge by how the person express their thoughts or ideas. In Thoreau’s excerpt, he emphasizes the importance of his philosophy, especially by making sure the reader is aware of his own feelings about it. He puts literary devices such as metaphors, personification, and imagery to construct his explanation for his philosophy as well as provide several attitudes to let the reader identify how he feels towards people and the value of their ideas.
When it comes to civil rights, there are two pieces of literature commonly discussed. One of these pieces is Henry David Thoreau’s persuasive lecture On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. In this work, Thoreau discusses how one must combat the government with disobedience of unjust laws and positive friction to create change. The second piece is the commonly known article Letter From a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. This letter covers the ways in which peaceful protest and standing up against injustice can lead to positive results. Both pieces conveyed a similar message of standing up for what is right. The strongest rhetorical methods which Thoreau uses are allusions, logos, ethos and rhetorical questions. However, King’s use of
“To read [Walden] as a poem,” writes Anderson (1968), “is to assume that its meaning resides not in its logic but in its language, its structure of images, its symbolism—and is inseparable from them” (p. 18). In this way in general, as Anderson concludes, can we as students of literature “discover the true poetic subjects” (p. 18); and in this way in particular can we here read, investigate, and parse the meaning of such subjects as “solitude”, to which Thoreau devoted an entire chapter—the eponymous Chapter 5, “Solitude”. Thoreau delivers this his poetic sensibility by way of what Golemba (1988) discerns are two “clash[ing]…rhetorical modes” (p. 385)—more succinctly, what Anderson (1968) determines are wit and metaphor. It is of contention here that metaphor impels the poetry of “Solitude” and thus is that which, upon close reading expresses not the logic but the language of what solitude truly means.
An American Author, Transcendentalist and tax resister, Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord Massachusetts, and lived there most of his life. He was opposed to many of the things that went on in our society and debated many issues in his life. Two of these major issues are , the Mexican American War and the implement of Slavery in our society. This was the reason for many of his writings include “Slavery in Massachusetts” and “Civil Disobedience” where he wrote about his principles and views against the U.S government and their involvement in the Mexican American War and the evil of Slavery. Thoreau opposed to these because they promote unjust government practices which he was strongly against.
In the first paragraph, Thoreau states that he wants to find a higher purpose to his life. He decides to live in the woods so that he can lead a simple life yet dig deeper into details that regular people overlook. He wants to absorb everything that life has to offer him.
Henry David Thoreau was bon on July 12, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, on his grandmother’s farm. Thoreau was of French-Huguenot and Scottish-Quaker decent. Thoreau was interested in writing at an early age. At the age of ten he wrote his first essay “The seasons”. He attended Concord Academy until 1833 when he was accepted to Harvard University but with his pending financial situation he was forced to attend Cambridge in August of 1833. In September of 1833 with the help of his family he was able to attend Harvard University. He graduated college in August of 1837.
Freedom from anything is a product of the awareness that one must revolt for a higher moral cause to get a good outcome. People have to fight for what they believe in and speak their word to get what they want in society. Sometimes those groups get what they want and other times people are not so fortunate. In the eyes of Henry David Thoreau, he believed in exactly that. As an American transcendentalist, Thoreau enthusiastically maintained these beliefs through his journalism. He implemented his approval for independence and fairness in his essay called Civil Disobedience. This essay was written after Thoreau spent a night in the Birmingham jail and he thought about the American society. This essay is know very well known and has influenced many civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. King regularly used the philosophies that Thoreau wrote in his paper during the bus boycotts in Alabama. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a nonviolent protest where the African American citizens of Alabama rejected the use of the buses until desegregation was passed. The protest all started when Rosa Parks put her foot down and did not give up her seat to a white male on the bus. She was later arrested for violating a city law requiring racial segregation of public buses. The boycott was ultimately ended by the Supreme Court decision to desegregate the buses. Throughout the entirety of the passive protest, MLK proceeded with the essay written by Thoreau in his mind so that he would never let the white people change his view of equal rights. He kept striving to achieve perfect equality between blacks and whites to make a change in the faulty society.
“Follow your heart. Life is not a straight line there are lots of curves, circles, and detours. Each and every experience will give you something valuable. Keep close to those you love and who love you. Family is so important. Always do your best, be honest with yourself and others, have integrity, be dependable, like who you are, change what you don't like, keep learning, keep trying, you are better than you think.” (Rodríguez)
In chapter two of Henry David Thoreau's Walden, entitled "Where I Lived, and What I Lived for", there are two themes that run throughout the narrative. The key theme that emerges continually is that of simplicity with the additional theme being that of freedom. Thoreau finds himself surrounded by a world that has no true freedom or simplified ways, with people committed to the world that surrounds them rather than being committed to their own true self within nature.
Also, no one wants to live a life with a occupation they don't like. Everyone should live how they want to live, live their dreams. To do that, they have to be willing to go through the hardships of life, to fail before they can succeed. No one should have to conform and just settle with something that’s not in their full potential. If you want to do something, something that’s important to you, you have to work for it.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.” In this quote, Eleanor is expressing that you should always take advantage of the universal human right to be an individual. From time immemorial, many of those who have led meaningful and enjoyable lives have shared one particular trait in common: individualism. Chris McCandless and Thoreau were no different, they both embodied individualism and as a result they have unknowingly inspired generations.
Annie Dillard, a Pulitzer Prize winner and writer, says, “If he noticed how he felt, he could not have done the work” (Dillard). She is referring to Dave Rahm, a stunt pilot who seemed to love his work. After Annie had took a flight with him, she had realized that he was not as passionate about being a stunt pilot as everyone thought. Many people can be fond of their type of work, but someday they will realize they are not happy with it. I know someone personally who had a great career, and decided they were not happy and quit. Also, many people would consider Dave Rahm to have a dream job, but it shows that someone can not be happy unless they are passionate about their work. Likewise, Thomas Carlyle believes that an individual’s passion will be calling. Carlyle says, “He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will follow it!” (Carlyle). This is a great representation of the point Annie Dillard is trying to get across. Thomas Carlyle is saying that through life a man has to find his life purpose and the reason he walks the Earth. This article is a perfect example of someone quits everything just to find their professional calling in life. Although he believes you should find your passion, Carlyle also says, “an endless significance lies in Work; a man perfects himself by working” (Carlyle). By saying this, Thomas means that a person has to find
With the statement, “Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them,” Thoreau is saying that many people in the world, including the United States, are not able to enjoy life because they are too preoccupied with working and earning wealth to buy unnecessary goods. Thoreau believes that men only need four things to survive: fuel, food, shelter, and clothing. However, according to Thoreau, people still strive to obtain more and more unnecessary material goods. To obtain these goods, Thoreau writes, “He has no time to be any thing but a machine,” meaning that men are so busy working to make excessive money that work consumes their entire lives. Thoreau, on the other hand, ignores “factitious cares” such as excessive wealth, furniture, and a large home, in order to enjoy his life and not be forced to live his life as a machine.
Henry David Thoreau implies that simplicity and nature are valuable to a person’s happiness in “Why I Went to the Woods”. An overall theme used in his work was the connection to one’s spiritual self. Thoreau believed that by being secluded in nature and away from society would allow one to connect with their inner self. Wordsworth and Thoreau imply the same idea that the simple pleasures in life are easily overlooked or ignored. Seeing the true beauty of nature allows oneself to rejuvenate their mentality and desires. When one allows, they can become closer to their spiritual selves. One of William Wordsworth’s popular pieces, “Tintern Abbey”, discusses the beauty and tranquility of nature. Wordsworth believed that when people
What comes to mind at the mention of Henry David Thoreau? A lot of people would say his uniqueness, or how different he is from everyone else in the play. The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail is a brilliant play written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, which focuses on the true story of Henry David Thoreau. For many years, Thoreau was written off as some weirdo outcast, especially in his time, but now we see how truly significant his non-conformity is. The principle of non-conformity is an integrated part of Thoreau’s life, not for the sake of being different, but for the sake of what is right.