$...$ The nation itself, with all its so called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is $...$ an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for them is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour $...$

$...$ If we do not get our sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build the railroads? And if railroads abre not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad, it rides upon us$.$

According to Thoreau, so many Americans felt a sense of "quiet desperation" because:

They worked stultifying jobs in order to acquire wealth and to purchase material things

A widening gulf between rich and poor led to jealousy and envy among city dwellers

An economic downturn left many men and women without jobs and no way to pay their bills

All of the above