We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is overeager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.

Philip Nicholas Shuttleworth (1782–1842), bishop of Chichester, in an address "Christ's Yoke Easy and Burden Light", published in The Sunday Library; or, The Protestant's Manual for the Sabbath-day (1831) by Thomas Frognall Dibdin; this seems to have become misattributed to Channing in A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) by Tryon Edwards