We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy. - Henry David Thoreau

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

The writer needs the suggestion and correction that a correspondent or companion is. I sometimes remember something which I have told another as worth telling to myself, i.e. writing in my Journal.

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.