Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are  not only not indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation  of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have  ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient  philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than  which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in  inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we  know so much of them as we do. 

The same is true of the more  modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an  impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground  of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit  is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art.  There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers.  Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live.  

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even  to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its  dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It  is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but  practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a  courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live  merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no  sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men. But why do men  degenerate ever? What makes families run out? What is the nature of  the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that  there is none of it in our own lives?

~ Walden