We are beginning to see that money, after all, is not the main thing. The real values cannot be bought and sold.
Interpretation
Money is not the most important aspect of life; true value lies in intangible qualities.
In this quote, John Burroughs emphasizes the idea that material wealth does not equate to true worth or happiness. He argues that the most valuable aspects of life, such as love, friendship, and personal fulfillment, cannot be purchased with money, highlighting the importance of prioritizing these intangible values over financial pursuits.
In practice
During a financial literacy workshop, one might say this quote to shift the focus to the importance of relationships.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
Next to the laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because he is freer and his mind more at leisure.
Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
Pioneering spirit should continue, not to conquer the planet or space ... but rather to improve the quality of life.
Even as I approach the gambling hall, as soon as I hear, two rooms away, the jingle of money poured out on the table, I almost go into convulsions.
That very church which the world likes best is sure to be that which God abhors.
I am for . . . each individual doing just as he chooses in all matters which concern nobody else.
We are surrounded by those in need of our attention, our encouragement, our support, our comfort, our kindness... We are the Lordβs hands here upon the earth, with the mandate to serve and to lift His children. He is dependent upon each of us
Dreams are symbolic in order that they cannot be understood; in order that the wish, which is the source of the dream, may remain unknown.
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