The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.
I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account.
It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have...but shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?
Love your life, poor as it is.
How many a poor immortal soul I have met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it [an oversized home].
I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.
I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.
Men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.
I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.
This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle!
I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath.
I learned what it is to live in the open air, and I learned that our lives are domestic in more sense than we think.
The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindu, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich inward.
I learned to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of nature, rather than a member of society.
There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. [It allows you to] be the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark of your own streams and oceans; [to] explore your own higher latitudes; [to] be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessities of life.
To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.
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