Henry David Thoreau Quotations: ECONOMY
Just in proportion to the outward poverty is the inward wealth.—Journal, 13 November 1851
Let me see no other conflict but with prosperity.—Journal, 12 May 1850
Love your life, poor as it is.—Walden
Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk.—Walden
Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over—and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy accident."—Walden
Men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer.—Journal, 14 July 1845
Men should not labor foolishly like brutes, but the brain and the body should always, or as much as possible, work and rest together.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 2 May 1848
Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be born, but to be still-born, rather.—"Life without Principle"
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine.—Walden
My furniture, part of which I made myself—and the rest cost me nothing of which I have not rendered an account—consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp.—Walden
