We are beginning to see that money, after all, is not the main thing. The real values cannot be bought and sold.
Interpretation
Money is not the most important aspect of life; true value lies in intangible qualities.
In this quote, John Burroughs emphasizes the idea that material wealth does not equate to true worth or happiness. He argues that the most valuable aspects of life, such as love, friendship, and personal fulfillment, cannot be purchased with money, highlighting the importance of prioritizing these intangible values over financial pursuits.
In practice
During a financial literacy workshop, one might say this quote to shift the focus to the importance of relationships.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
Next to the laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because he is freer and his mind more at leisure.
Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.
We are plain quiet folk, and I have no use for adventures. Nasty, disturbing, and uncomfortable things.
I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.
I am entirely persuaded that the agitations of the public mind advance its powers, and that at every vibration between the points of liberty and despotism, something will be gained for the former. As men become better informed, their rulers must respect them the more.
Boredom is always counter-revolutionary. Always.
Often the people most concerned about others going to hell when they die seem less concerned with the hells on earth right now, while the people most concerned with the hells on earth right now seem the least concerned about hell after death.
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