A hard, insensible person whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than rock, whose heart is comparatively soft.

"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.  I see that such intercourse, long continued, would make one thoroughly . . . hard and course.  But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse.  A hard, insensible person whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock.  From hard, coarse, insensible people with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Ruddy rock at Red Mountain Open Space, Larimer County, CO; October 20, 2012