And pray, what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt?

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.

He that does not eat need not work.

I learned from my experience that it costs incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food, and that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals and yet retain health and strength.

I spaded up all the land which I required for my beans, potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. I learned that if one would live simply and eat only the crop he raised, and raise no more than he ate, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground.

How much more interesting is that man's supper who has just been forth to hunt the fuel to cook it with.

I loved to have mine (woodpile) before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. They warmed me twice, once while I was splitting them and again when they were on the fire. No fuel could give out more heat.

Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

On Clothing

We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches... It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

Even in our democratic New England towns, the accidental possession of wealth... obtains for the possessor almost universal respect. But they who yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

It is desirable that a man...live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty handed without anxiety.

On Shelter

I considered that I enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it.

An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer's life, even if he is not encumbered with a family; estimating the pecuniary value of every man's labor at one dollar a day...so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. 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?

Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have.

Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary.

There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged?

Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter?

The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shell they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque.

My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it. But it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbours.

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually.

On Needs

For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but to easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York.

I have learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot.

This spending the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it...

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.

None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. This is shiftlessness.

It costs me nothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and the moon, and I am willing that they should look in. The moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet. If he is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided than to add a single item to the details of housekeeping...It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

I had three chairs in my house, one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, &c., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost.

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

...a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

...my greatest skill has been to want but little...

Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify.

Certainly no nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of philosophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals.

But lo! Men have become the tools of their tools.

We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

It is not worth while to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.

On Work

I made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it.

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life.

Time is but the stream I go a fishing in.

Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve?

When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.

The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor that is necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.

For many years I was self appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully.

I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.

It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.

...I found, that by working about six weeks a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.

For myself I found that the occupation of a day laborer was the most independent of any. The laborer's day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit.

If the cloud that hangs over the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as beneficent as that which floats over the farmer's fields, then the elements and Nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their errands and be their escort.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.

On Living

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. The incessant anxiety and strain is a well nigh incurable form of disease. One has no time to be anything but a machine. It is a fool's life. I am convinced from experience that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...

A man sits as many risks as he runs.

The amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead and alive to begin with.

On Health

For my panacea, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. If men will not drink this at the fountainhead of day, then we must even bottle and sell it for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription tickets to morning time. But remember, it will not quite keep to noontime even in the coolest cellar.

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.

The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us.

The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?

...making yourselves sick that you may lay up something against a sick day.

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country... A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of nature and has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm but it was AEolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.

On Education

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book?

Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item on the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.

Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month, the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this, or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rogers' penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?

My residence was more favorable not only to thought, but to reading, than a university.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

All this worldly wisdom was once the amiable heresy of some wise man.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

On Ideals

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to lead the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

It is difficult to begin without borrowing. Perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellowmen to have an interest in your enterprise.

Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts; but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates.

Goodness is the only investment which never fails.

It is never too late to give up your prejudices.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs.

On Nature

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigour, vast and titanic features, the wilderness with its living and decaying trees, the thundercloud, the rain.

While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons, nothing can make life a burden to me. My days were not days of the week, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of the clock. My life was become a drama of many scenes and without and end.

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity with Nature herself.

A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and housekeeper.

Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.

Spring An experience in immortality.

On Man

Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.

I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer.

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at the post office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night. We live thick and in each other's way, and stumble over one another. I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather dictates, his fate.

...man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?"

Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

Things do not change; we change.

"Unless above himself he canErect himself, how poor a thing is man!"

When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.

On Freedom

I am monarch of all I survey; my right there is none to dispute.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.

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.

I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

If I knew... that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Slavery and servility have produced no sweet scented flower annually, to charm the senses of men, for they have no real life: they are merely a decaying and a death, offensive to all healthy nostrils. We do not complain that they live, but that they do not get buried. Let the living bury them: even they are good for manure.

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant.

Do we call this the land of the free?... What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast?

Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made?... Are judges to interpret the law according to the letter, and not the spirit?... What right have you to enter into a compact with yourself that you will do thus or so, against the light within you?... Let lawyers decide trivial cases... A counterfeiting law factory... What kind of laws for free men can you expect from that?

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law when the government breaks it.