Quote
By Henry David Thoreau
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.
- Source
- Walden; or, Life in the Woods, 1854 · Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, p. 99
- Read at
- Internet Archive (Boston Public Library scan of the Ticknor and Fields edition)
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About this quote
From the chapter "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" of Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854). This is the text of the first edition.