Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable, and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fire-side every night; we live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose respect for one another.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
Posted September 17, 2010 at 11:24am in quote Quote of the Day Thoreau Henry David Thoreau solitude society respect Walden
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