Thoreau

I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky, our understanding more complrehensive and broader, like our plains, our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains and forests, and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. ... Else to what end does the world go on, and why was America discovered?

Thoreau, "Walking"