“My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.”

—  Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt it, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

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