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Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches;
Yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth.
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Once I spoke of the sea to a brook, and the brook thought me but an imaginative exaggerator;
And once I spoke of a brook to the sea, and the sea thought me but a depreciative defamer.
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How narrow is the vision that exalts the busyness of the ant above the singing of the grasshopper.
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The highest virtue here may be the least in another world.
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