Our life is frittered away by
detail.An honest man has hardly
need to count more than his ten fingers
or in extreme cases, he may add his ten
toes and lump the rest.
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!
I
say let your affairs be as two or three,
and not a hundred or a thousand. Instead
of a million, count half a dozen, and keep
your accounts on your thumbnail.
In the
midst of this chopping sea of civilized
life, such are the clouds and storms and
quicksands and thousand and one items to
be allowed for that man has to live, if
he would not founder and go to the bottom
and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning,
and he must be a great calculator indeed who
succeeds.
Simplify, simplify.
- Henry David Thoreau