From Ralph Waldo Emerson's journal, 28 February 1836:

Cold, bright Sunday morn, white with deep snow. Charles thinks that if a superior being should look into families, he would find natural relations existing, and man a worthy being, but if he followed them into shops, senates, churches, and societies, they would appear wholly artificial and worthless. Society seems noxious. I believe that against these baleful influences Nature is the antidote. The man comes out of the wrangle of the shop and office, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. He not only quits the cabal, but he finds himself. But how few men see the sky and the woods!

(cf. RalphWaldoEmerson (5 Aug 2003), ...)

TopicLiterature - 2006-11-29

(correlates: MercifulSchadenfreude, OnClustering, MichaelVentris, ...)