Quotes about Inspiration

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is in the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigour of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess of Concord, i.e. than I import into it.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

It is to be remembered that by good deeds or words you encourage yourself, who always have need to witness or hear them.

I walk out into a Nature such as the old prophets and poets, Manu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America: neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in mythology than in any history of America, so called, that I have seen.

I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the dictionary defines it, outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, than this, and I have no doubt that they were originally inspired directly from Heaven to do thus, though they have no Biblical record of the revelation.

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man and serves him directly.

I was always conscious of sounds in nature which my ears could never hear,—that I caught but the prelude to a strain. She always retreats as I advance. Away behind and behind is she and her meaning. Will not this faith and expectation make to itself ears at length?

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live.

I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in.

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated.

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas in nature.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.