The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Overindulgence harden senses and tenderness slip through like grains of sand - unnoticed.

You can study it! http://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/courses.php?action=course&id=7845
- spirituality for teetotallers.

Walden (or life in the woods), Chapter one
Economy

"...Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance — which his growth requires — who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly."

It is impressive how the words "He has no time to be anything but a machine" are so certain. I know I don´t have to judge people in a system as if this was entirely their fault; however, sometimes a man has a choice to make. I know it because I have been there and I have made the choice of plucking the finer fruits of life in a country were people are too worried about satisfying their primordial needs (the more physical needs). In a "developing country" like mine, people spend time actually out there trying to make a coin because starving is not an option. Just think about it, in a country where several people don´t know how to read (the ones who can don´t do it) because the educational system is a mediocre joke; where every day you can see children from a pretty early age on the street working or begging; where people have to work 12 hours a day to earn five dollars a day so that they can have eat; where so a ridiculous number of little girls are waiting for children they are not going to be able to properly sustain and educate... .

where is the time to think as Thoreau would have loved people to think?

Captain was quote Thoreau, so your comments is silly.

Incidentally, we don´t deserve it.