fyi, source of the Thoreau quotation -- "the cost of a thing"

The quotation appears on (at least) 439 web pages.  I
posted it a day ago as it appeared in "Reflection of the
Day" in the Boston Globe.

It so nicely says something, so true, in so few words.

One reader on cyber-soc asked its source (it's in Walden):

From: http://www.loper.org/~george/interests/housing/thero/thoreau.html

While at Walden, Thoreau strove to reduce his needs and to work
efficiently. "The cost of a thing" says Thoreau, "is the amount of
what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it,
immediately or in the long run."

In his essay Walden (found in The Cambridge Companion To Henry David
Thoreau edited by Joel Myerson, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.
99), Richard J. Schneider notes that Thoreau's cabin is the antithesis
of the fancy homes admired by many New Englanders.

This did not keep Thoreau from visiting those self-same homes. And,
sometimes, his own house "being so small, he had 'the difficulty of
getting to a sufficient distance' from his guests whenever they 'began
to utter the big thoughts in big words'" (Carlos Baker, Emerson Among
The Eccentrics, New York: Viking Press, 1996, p.270).
-- 


           W. Curtiss Priest, Director, CITS
        Research Affiliate, Culture & Media, MIT
      Center for Information, Technology & Society
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