None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. - Henry David Thoreau

What a perfectly New England sound is this voice of the crow! If you stand perfectly still anywhere in the outskirts of the town and listen, stilling the almost incessant hum of your own personal factory, this is perhaps the sound which you will be most sure to hear rising above all sounds of human industry and leading your thoughts to some far bay in the woods where the crow is venting his disgust.

He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruits of riches, who summer and winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts.

Let not your life be wholly without an object, though it be only to ascertain the flavor of a cranberry, for it will not be only the quality of an insignificant berry that you will have tasted, but the flavor of your life to that extent, and it will be such a sauce as no wealth can buy.