The Concord Quartet Quotes

“Who is he that shall control me? Why may I not speak and write and think with entire freedom? What am I to the universe, or, the universe, what is it to me? Who hath forged the chains of wrong and right, of Opinion and Custom? And must I wear them? I say to the universe, Mighty One! thou art not my mother. Return to chaos if thou wilt. I shall still
exist. I live. If I owe my being, it is to a destiny greater than thine. Star by star, world by world, system by system shall be crushed,-but I shall live.”
― Samuel A. Schreiner Jr., The Concord Quartet: Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau and the Friendship That Freed the American Mind