The scholar is not apt to make his most familiar experience come gracefully to the aid of his expression.
Henry David ThoreauA truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
Henry David ThoreauHow shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.
Henry David ThoreauThe heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever.
Henry David Thoreau