Enjoying Forests is Considered Lazy, Cutting Them Down Virtuous

If a man walked in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer, but if he spends his whole day as a speculator shearing of those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is estimated as an industrious and enterprising citizen—as if a town had no interest in forests but to cut them down.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (2008)

• environmentalism