A world of simplicities, of blessed contents, of unworn, joyous impulses, of little new, unceasing Spontaneities; a world that he looked into, as we used to do at Sattler's Cosmoramas, through the merest peepholes, and comprehended by the merest hints; but which the presence of this girl under the roof with himself as surely revealed to him as the wind-flower reveals the spring.
"The Other Girls"
Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
He reacted, he rebounded, in favour of his fireside, from whatever brief explorations or curiosities; these passionate Spontaneities were the pulse of his life and quite some of the principal events of ours; and, as he was nothing if not expressive, whatever happened to him for inward intensity happened abundantly to us for pity and terror, as it were, as well as for an ease and a quality of amusement among ourselves that was really always to fail us among others.
"A Small Boy and Others"
Henry James
Not only do we reflect the social formalities of our environment, and thus lose the distinguishing Spontaneities of childhood, but each of us builds up his own little world of seclusion and formality with himself.
"The Story of the Mind"
James Mark Baldwin