"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."
"If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,--and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,--it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."
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Source: Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.21, Simon and Schuster
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