I don't know why you're getting down voted. Thoreau was a world class slacker and leach. A friend of mine did a paper on him back in college. If you read through his correspondence with R.W. Emmerson it's obvious how he was coddled.

EDIT: I think the hyper judgemental part about people liking him wanting to be like him. That part might be disingenuous, if only because he didn't really espouse his own actual lifestyle in his writing.