"The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?"


– Henry David Thoreau, Walden

"That grand old poem called Winter is round again without any connivance of mine."


– Henry David Thoreau, Through the Year with Thoreau