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The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

CIX



O! never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seem\'d my flame to qualify,

As easy might I from my self depart

As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:

That is my home of love: if I have rang\'d,

Like him that travels, I return again;

Just to the time, not with the time exchang\'d,

So that myself bring water for my stain.

Never believe though in my nature reign\'d,

All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,

That it could so preposterously be stain\'d, 

To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;

  For nothing this wide universe I call,

  Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.

 	--William Shakespeare

LXXIX



Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,

My verse alone had all thy gentle grace;

But now my gracious numbers are decay\'d,

And my sick Muse doth give an other place.

I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument

Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;

Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent

He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.

He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word

From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,

And found it in thy cheek: he can afford

No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live. 

  Then thank him not for that which he doth say,

  Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay.

 	--William Shakespeare

Henry David Thoreau
I have learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances
confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the
life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in
common hours.