Original artwork, not a still
Walden • 1854
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
Thoreau turns money into time. Every purchase is paid for in hours of your own life, so the true price is not the one on the tag. It underpins a long line of simple-living and frugality writing, and gets quoted whenever someone asks whether a raise, a bigger house or a second car is worth the hours it takes to earn.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for WaldenShow the scene
The sentence comes from Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854), in the opening chapter, "Economy". Thoreau is arguing that civilisation has not made people richer if their houses take a lifetime to pay for. He prices an average local house at about eight hundred dollars, which he works out as ten to fifteen years of a labourer's life, so that a man has commonly spent more than half his life before his dwelling is earned. The "cost of a thing" is Thoreau's measuring stick for that bargain.
Sources (1)
- Project Gutenberg: WaldenChapter 1, 'Economy'Reference checked
Context reviewed
