“Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terrible simplicity.”
“In books we have the compendium of all human experience. We may use them or neglect them as we will, but if we use them, we may share the courage and endurance of adventurers, the thoughts of sages, the visions of poets and the raptures of lovers, and - some few of us perhaps - the ecstasies of Saints.”
“We all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives, says he, are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do: we are always complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would no end of them."- On the Right Use of Time”
“15. "Few men during their lifetime comes anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used."--”
“We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity.”
“We are often told we are materialistic. It seems to me, we are not materialistic enough. We have a disrespect for materials. We use it quickly and carelessly. If were genuinely materialistic people, we would understand where materials come from and where they go to. But, at the moment, the entire global economy seems to be built on the model of digging things up from one hole in the ground on one side of the earth, transporting them around the world, using them for a few days, and sticking them in a hole in the ground on the other side of the world.”