"It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see."
"Every wild apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of unoriginal men."
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Source: Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.399, Simon and Schuster
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