Food for Thought

But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and theives break through and steal....We are made to exagerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilent we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties.

-H.D. Thoreau, Walden