Henry David Thoreau

And if the civ­i­lized man’s pur­suits are no wor­thier than the sav­age’s, if he is em­ployed the greater part of his life in ob­tain­ing gross nec­es­saries and com­forts merely, why should he have a bet­ter dwelling than the for­mer?

But men la­bor un­der a mis­take. The bet­ter part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for com­post. By a seem­ing fate, com­monly called ne­ces­sity, they are em­ployed, as it says in an old book, lay­ing up trea­sures which moth and rust will cor­rupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not be­fore. It is said that Deu­calion and Pyrrha cre­ated men by throw­ing stones over their heads be­hind them:—

Inde genus du­rum sumus, ex­pe­rien­sque labo­rum,
Et doc­u­menta damus qua simus orig­ine nati.

Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way—

“From thence our kind hard­hearted is, en­dur­ing pain and care,
Ap­prov­ing that our bod­ies of a stony na­ture are.”

I see young men, my towns­men, whose mis­for­tune it is to have in­her­ited farms, houses, barns, cat­tle, and farm­ing tools; for these are more eas­ily ac­quired than got rid of.

t is very ev­i­dent what mean and sneak­ing lives many of you live, for my sight has been whet­ted by ex­pe­ri­ence; al­ways on the lim­its, try­ing to get into busi­ness and try­ing to get out of debt, a very an­cient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, an­other’s brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still liv­ing, and dy­ing, and buried by this other’s brass; al­ways promis­ing to pay, promis­ing to pay, to­mor­row, and dy­ing to­day, in­sol­vent; seek­ing to curry fa­vor, to get cus­tom, by how many modes, only not state-prison of­fenses; ly­ing, flat­ter­ing, vot­ing, con­tract­ing your­selves into a nut­shell of ci­vil­ity or di­lat­ing into an at­mos­phere of thin and va­porous gen­eros­ity, that you may per­suade your neigh­bor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his car­riage, or im­port his gro­ceries for him; mak­ing your­selves sick, that you may lay up some­thing against a sick day, some­thing to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stock­ing be­hind the plas­ter­ing, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no mat­ter where, no mat­ter how much or how lit­tle.

“be not af­flicted, my child, for who shall as­sign to thee what thou hast left un­done?”

I should not talk so much about my­self if there were any­body else whom I knew as well.

mis­for­tune it is to have in­her­ited farms, houses, barns, cat­tle, and farm­ing tools; for these are more eas­ily ac­quired than got rid of

How can he re­mem­ber well his ig­no­rance—which his growth re­quires—who has so of­ten to use his knowl­edge?

Public opin­ion is a weak tyrant com­pared with our own pri­vate opin­ion. What a man thinks of him­self, that it is which de­ter­mines, or rather in­di­cates, his fate

As if you could kill time with­out in­jur­ing eter­nity.