Thoreau's thoughts

"In the bare fields and tinkling wood, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold. A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has virtue in it, and, accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor as God himself."

from A Winter Walk
~Henry David Thoreau