...each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms, — the refusal was...

...practically. Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. So far, Father's selections are about what one would expect, and I've long assumed that the second...

...bedfellow, and a red squirrel was his alarm clock, "as if sent out of the woods for this purpose." "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone," he wrote. And, "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, then be crowded on a velvet...

...Speculation, accumulation, investment: all schemes for saving up are doomed to ultimate bankruptcy, "for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone" (V^82). So too, the house, intended to shelter the subject, most frequently serves to dispossess it,...

...unnecessary robbed us of the time needed to experience and appreciate the true adventures of life. "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone," he said, thinking, no doubt, about videophones and plasma screens. Or, put another way, "When he has...

...doing anything about it. Henry Thoreau, who never heard of greenhouse warming, had other reservations. "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone," he said, meaning basically that we should turn off the machine and go read a book. Considering the...

...is found not in the accumulation of possessions, but, on the contrary, in relinquishing them, "for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone." Thoreau wanted people to cultivate poverty "like a garden herb, like sage," not to trouble themselves...

...nature, and questioned our culture's obsession for material wealth. He stated, with respect to nature, "a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."5 John Muir, who wrote, "the Universe would be incomplete without man, it would also be incomplete...

...what humans really need, and where we should limit our actions and "let things be." As he puts it. "a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."4" Let me emphasize thatThoreau was adamantly opposed to Christian forms of "austerity": rather...