“None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.”

“A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know. If there is something which does not concern me, which is out of my line, which by experience or by genius my attention is not drawn to, however novel and remarkable it may be, if it is spoken, we hear it not, if it is written, we read it not, or if we read it, it does not detain us. Every man thus tracks himself through life, in all his hearing and reading and observation and traveling. His observations make a chain. The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest which he has observed, he does not observe. By and by we may be ready to receive what we cannot receive now. I find, for example, in Aristotle some thing about the spawning, etc., of the pout and perch, because I know something about it already and have my attention aroused; but I do not discover till very late that he has made other equally important observations on the spawning of other fishes, because I am not interested in those fishes.”

“If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairty tale from the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.”

“The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over bytheir predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things tohave been cared for. According to Evelyn, "the wise Solomon prescribedordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman prætors havedecided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather theacorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to thatneighbor." Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut ournails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter norlonger. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to haveexhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man'scapacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he cando by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thyfailures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign tothee what thou hast left undone?”

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”

“If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man — and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages — it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and 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.”

“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?”