How we cite our quotes: (Essay.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. (Economy.9)
Thoreau was strongly anti-slavery. That "almost" ("I may almost say") suggests that he knows himself that he might be making a rather questionable claim here. For most people, being the "slave-driver of yourself" would have still been preferable to being a slave to somebody else, by whatever standard. Thoreau's just not most people, though.
Quote #2
The man who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are three such men in Concord. (Economy.49)
Here, our author laments the fact that farming is no longer done for survival, but for profit. Farmers – including Thoreau's own neighbors and friends – are thus led into debt.
Quote #3
It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. (Economy.52)
Thoreau criticizes the wide gap between the rich and the poor. Not everyone is enjoying the benefits of industrialization. The wealth gap is a huge issue even today, and something that a lot of brilliant men and women – like Thoreau – spend a lot of brainpower trying to resolve.
Quote #4
What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life (Solitude.5)
This statement gives us a sense of what the main centers of town life were like in the 19th century, including the railroad depot, and such notable urban areas as Beacon Hill in Boston and Five Points in New York City. What would this list look like if it were written today? Starbucks would definitely be on there, that's for sure.
Quote #5
[R]unaway slaves with plantation manners, who listened from time to time, like the fox in the fable, as if they heard the hounds a-baying on their track, and looked at me beseechingly (Visitors.16)
Thoreau describes the runaway slaves in Concord sympathetically. He truly feels for them. What's more, he put this sympathy into action, by protesting the law that dictated that any slaves caught in the North had to be returned to their owners in the South.
Quote #6
As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens (Bean-Field.6)
Evidence of Native American life is everywhere, reminding us that this area once sustained a community wiped out by European colonization.
Quote #7
But sometimes it was a really noble and inspiring strain that reached these woods, and the trumpet that sings of fame, and I felt as if I could spit a Mexican with a good relish – for should we always stand for trifles? – and looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry upon. (Bean-Field.9)
This is one of Thoreau's silly moments. In reality, he was opposed to the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848.
Quote #8
One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the door of its senatehouse. (Village.3)
Thoreau relates here an incident where he was arrested for not paying his taxes, which he viewed as an act of protest against the government. He goes into this incident in more detail in the very famous essay "Civil Disobedience."
Quote #9
With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam's grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels. (Baker Farm.9)
In the 19th century, there was a surge of Irish immigrants who were fleeing the potato famine in Ireland. Unfortunately, for an otherwise pretty enlightened guy, Thoreau seems to stick to stereotypical representations of the Irish as unintelligent.
Quote #10
I delight to come to my bearings, -- not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may, -- not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. (Conclusion.15)
"Restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century": that's how Thoreau views America's rapid industrialization – harsh.