There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.
Henry David ThoreauThis is one of those instances in which the individual genius is found to consent, as indeed it always does, at last, with the universal.
Henry David ThoreauNo doubt Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than another thing.... Yet what were history if he did not exaggerate it? How comes it that history never has to wait for facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go on forgetting the facts never so long, he can remember two for every one forgotten. The musty records of history, like the catacombs, contain the perishable remains, but only in the breast of genius are embalmed the souls of heroes.
Henry David Thoreau