A Life in the Country ~ The Happiness of not Having Things

19 Oct

Apple Jelly made from apples grown and harvested here at Bealtaine Cottage Smallholding

This will keep well for years if stored in a cool pantry and can be used in baking and cooking and makes a wonderful sweet and sour sauce!

Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language,
and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying.  The
consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and
has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.  ~Elise Boulding

Everything we possess that is not necessary for life or happiness becomes a
burden, and scarcely a day passes that we do not add to it.  ~Robert Brault

And so, tied down with the complex consumerism of life, we don’t get time to see and appreciate the simple frost on leaves, or deeply inhale the clear, morning air…

Quality does not lie in quantity, but in something that is unique…and the most unigue is made by oneself, for sure.

Maybe a person’s time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to
buy food.  ~Frank A. Clark


An angel reposes in a hand built planter by a home made bench…

The best things in life are nearest:  Breath in your nostrils, light in your
eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before
you.  Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it
comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in
life.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude
will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
~Henry David Thoreau

I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but
private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because
they would take away my liberty.  ~George Santayana, “The Irony of Liberalism”

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be
beautiful.  ~William Morris

2 Responses to “A Life in the Country ~ The Happiness of not Having Things”

  1. eremophila November 16, 2011 at 10:21 am #

    That quote by William Morris is one I love, and try to follow :-)

    • PermaGoddess November 16, 2011 at 2:08 pm #

      His work was brilliant, wasn’t it? Morris epitomised an entire era and made us love it…Victorian!
      Colx

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