Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.
Henry David Thoreau · Walden
Wisdom & life
“Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly…”
- Author
- Henry David Thoreau
- Work
- Walden
- Year
- 1854
- Length
- 133 words
- Source
- Project Gutenberg eBook #205
Public domain. This passage is in the public domain. Henry David Thoreau died in 1862, more than 70 years ago, and the work was first published in 1854. You can copy, print, read aloud or sell it without asking permission; a credit is kind but not required. The text is copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg edition linked here.
Related passages
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.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control.
All the world’s a stage,And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances,And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages.
New passages, now and then
We keep adding passages and collections. Leave your email and we’ll tell you when something new lands.
Optional. One short email per new collection, and nothing else.