"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."
"The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state....The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard."
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Source: Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.331, Penguin
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