Tag: Henry David Thoreau
The Happiness of not Having Things
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.Â
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
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…
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
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
“The best things in life are nearest:Â 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
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be
beautiful.
~William Morris
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A Life in the Country ~ Tree Spirits
If …
a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of
being regarded as a loafer.Â
But …
if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing
off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an
industrious and enterprising citizen. ~Henry David Thoreau
Life’s funny like that!
Have we got it all mixed up then?
You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so
venerable a neighbour, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes
you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night. ~Denise Levertov
I believe that each tree has a spirit…one that is unique to that tree. Planting trees is one of the most joyful ways of connecting to the great divine spirit. In a country that is one of the most deforested in Europe, planting a tree is an act of environmental conservation equal to none!
We have a future…possibly…and only with the help of trees…
God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and
a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. ~John
Muir
Unfortunately, it is a fact that most people will cut down trees if it is to their own advantage. it is also a fact that most people are frightened of because trees are beyond their control. How do I know this? Look around you!
A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving,
swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But
though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.Â
Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like
harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves.Â
No wonder the hills and groves were God’s first temples, and the more they are
cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems
the Lord himself. ~John Muir
Even as a dead tree, lying on it’s side as it decays back into the beautiful Earth, this tree holds pools of water and life…could anything so exquisite be made by the hand of man?
No town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels,
if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets. ~Henry Ward
Beecher, Proverbs, 1887