None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Henry David ThoreauRead
The cost of a thing is something called life which is given in exchange for it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The value of an item is measured by the life experience and effort invested in obtaining it.
This quote by Henry David Thoreau suggests that every possession or achievement comes at the cost of life's time and energy. It emphasizes that the true price of something is not just monetary; it is the life and experiences we trade for it, prompting deeper reflection on what we truly value in our lives and how we choose to spend our time.
Themes
CostValueLifeExchangeExperience
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on consumerism, a speaker might use this quote to highlight the importance of being mindful of what one spends time and money on.
More from Henry David Thoreau
All quotes βThrough want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.
Henry David ThoreauRead
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
Henry David ThoreauRead
Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable.
Henry David ThoreauRead
As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.
Henry David ThoreauRead
That grand old poem called Winter
Henry David ThoreauRead
Similar quotes
We are going to have to find ways of organizing ourselves cooperatively,sanely, scientifically, harmonically and in regenerative spontaneity with the rest of humanity around the earth.... We are not going to be able to operate our spaceship earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common.
R. Buckminster FullerRead
I try to believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Count them, Alice. One, there are drinks that make you shrink. Two, there are foods that make you grow. Three, animals can talk. Four, cats can disappear. Five, there is a place called Underland. Six, I can slay the Jabberwocky.
Lewis CarrollRead
If a man who has committed many a misdemeanor does not repent and cleanse his heart of the evil, retribution will come upon his person as sure as the streams run into the ocean which becomes ever deeper and wider. If a man who has committed a misdemeanor come to the knowledge of it, reform himself, and practise goodness, the force of retribution will gradually exhaust itself as a disease gradually loses its baneful influence when the patient perspires.
Gautama BuddhaRead
Night was a very different matter. It was dense, thicker than the very walls, and it was empty, so black, so immense that within it you could brush against appalling things and feel roaming and prowling around a strange, mysterious horror.
Guy De MaupassantRead
The war is relentless: it puts the alternative in a ruthless relief: either to perish, or to catch up with the advanced countries and outdistance them, too, in economic matters.
Vladimir LeninRead
Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.
Wallace StevensRead