"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."
"When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not trulycumulative treasure; where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies which did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already spread from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of what poetry is,--I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee into what company they were to fall. Alas! that so soon the work of a true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole!"
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Source: Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.256, Delphi Classics
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