Friday, December 14, 2007

Thoughts from Thoreau

[A]nd yet he had rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden, p. 148

I've little to add, except that I'll be paying my share of taxes soon, and doing my darnedest to live without life's non-essentials so as to, perhaps, be able to take a reprieve therefrom, if only for a short while. Graduation is tomorrow, and I'm already longing for early retirement.

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