A life without principles

Polemical and thought-provoking, A Life Without Principles distils on every one of its pages, like drops of “fresh and living dew of truth,” the essence of Henry David Thoreau’s rebel philosophy. First delivered in 1854, this lecture of pure transcendentalist tone, which pricked like a thorn at industrial society and the principle-less lives of Thoreau’s fellow citizens, echoes in a present day where unbridled progress equates to widespread dehumanization.

Giving no quarter to false material needs and warning us against all institutions, these lines, as brief as they are central to the author’s thought, are essential reading so that we do not become “husk and shell, with nothing tender and living inside us.”