We rarely meet a person who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper.

 

"Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary conversation.  Surface meets surface.  When our life ceases to be inward . . . , conversation degenerates into mere gossip.  We rarely meet a person who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor . . . In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.  You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.  I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week.  I have tried it recently, and during that time it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region.  The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me.  You cannot serve two masters.  It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day."

Henry David Thoreau,
"Life Without Principle" (1863)  

Photo: Pasqueflowers and Greyrock, Roosevelt National Forest, CO; April 10, 2014