I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving. But as it is said of merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.
—Henry David Thoreau
—Henry David Thoreau
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
