As I (drive) through the (esses), endeavoring to recover my tone and sanity
and to perceive things truly and simply again, after having been
perambulating the bounds of this (list) and others all the week, and dealing
with the most commonplace and worldly minded men, and emphatically trivial
things, I feel as if I had committed suicide in a sense, I am again forcibly
struck with the truth of the fable of Apollo serving King Admetus, its
universal applicability. A fatal coarseness is the result of mixing in the
trivial affairs of men. Though I have been associating even with the select
men of this (list) and the surrounding (lists) , I feel inexpressibly
begrimed. My Pegasus has lost his wings; he has turned a reptile and gone on
his belly. Such things are compatible only with a cheap and superficial
life.
Henry David Thoreau
|