Henry David Thoreau | food for the mind |
True, we have declared our independence, and gained our liberty, but we have dissolved only the political bonds which connected us with Great Britain; though we have rejected her tea she still supplies us with food for the mind. Milton and Shakspeare, Cowper and Johnson, with their kindred spirits, have done and are still doing as much for the advancement of literature, and the establishment of a pure and nervous language, on this as on the other side of the water.
—Henry David Thoreau, unpublished essay, 1836, from Early Essays and Miscellanies, eds. Joseph J. Modenhauer and Edwin Moser, with Alexander C. Kern, 1974
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