There are some brilliant flashes of wisdom and funny observations, much of which are still relevant today, but the bits in between aren't so engaging and I've found my mind wandering off (which is why it's taking me ages to read...). That said, I thought I'd take stock now by sharing some of the highlights for me so far.
On what we wear (and why we bother wasting money on more clothes than we need):
"No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience."
"It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes."
"I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes."
"Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new."
On housing (and keeping up with the Joneses):
"Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbours have."
On luxury rail travel (he sounds unimpressed with the railways throughout the book to be honest):
"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion."
Later he says:
"If we do not get out sleepers, forge rails, and devote days and nights to work, but go on tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? ... But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us."
On avoiding life's complications:
"Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail."
He would have enjoyed the internet:
"If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once?"
Anyway, back to wading for me.
