A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period.... I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.
--Henry David Thoreau, Walden; Or, Life in the Woods
I am very much in agreement with Mr. Thoreau about avoiding enterprises that require new clothes, but I must confess that I am quite glad that he did not choose to direct his disdain towards those enterprises which require new notebooks and writing utensils (ie--all of them). Simplicity and common sense are all well and good, but one mustn't, after all, succumb to fanaticism. Prudence and careful consideration are important qualities to cultivate if only for their usefulness in diverting criticism from one's own faults to those that can be safely identified only in others.
6 Comments:
Perhaps we should never procure a new suit...until we have so conducted... that we feel like new men in the old
That is amazing! It articulates the journey I have been on for the last 5 years.
Harumph. I go to all the trouble to cut out some of the best bits of the paragraph to turn it into a bit of tongue-in-cheek whimsy, and you still insist on getting something out of it! :-)
It is a nice picture, though, isn't it?
This is precisely why I have never become a fireman. New Clothes.
“The biggest downside of my current job is that I have to wear a suit to work. Wearing uncomfortable clothes on purpose is an example of what former Princeton hockey player and Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence taught economists to call ‘signalling.’ You have to do it to show that you take your official responsibilities seriously. My proposal that Fed governors should signal their commitment to public service by wearing Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts has so far gone unheeded.”
Ben Bernanke.
visit me at http://loftypremise.blogspot.com/
You've committed plagiarism. You didn't leave a page number. Have fun getting cited by the government!
Post a Comment