Henry David Thoreau Quotations: ECONOMY
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.—Walden
Here and there a pilot-boat was towing its little boat astern toward some distant foreigner who had just fired a gun, the echo of which along the shore sounded like the caving of the bank.—Cape Cod
How admirably the artist is made to accomplish his self-culture by devotion to his art! The wood-sawyer, through his effort to do his work well, becomes not merely a better wood-sawyer, but measurably a better man.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 19 December 1853
How far can you carry your practicalness? How far does your knowledge really extend?—Journal, 7 June 1851
How much Nature herself suffers from drought! It seems quite as much as she can do to produce these crops.—Journal, 19 August 1851
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse.—Walden
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite,—only a sense of existence.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 6 December 1856
I am never rich in money, and I am never meanly poor.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
I am surveying, instead of lecturing, at present. Let me have a skimming from your "pan of unwrinkled cream."—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 31 December 1856
I cannot but regard it as a kindness in those who have the steering of me that, by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have been nailed down to this my native region so long and steadily, and made to study and love this spot of earth more and more. What would signify in comparison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the whole earth instead, got by wandering? The traveler's is but a barren and comfortless condition. Wealth will not buy a man a home in nature-house nor farm there. The man of business does not by his business earn a residence in nature, but is denaturalized rather.—Journal, 12 November 1853
