It was not that the jagged precipices were lofty, that the encircling woods were the dimmest shade, or that the waters were profoundly deep; but that over all, rocks, wood, and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths.

Thomas Cole

It is the sky that makes the earth so lovely at sunrise, and so splendid at sunset. In the one it breathes over the earth the crystal-like ether, in the other the liquid gold.

Thomas Cole

sunset soul sky

We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out is our own ignorance and folly.

Thomas Cole

wall eden ignorance

To walk with nature as a poet is the necessary condition of a perfect artist.

Thomas Cole

poet artist perfect

. . .nature is still predominant, and there are those who regret that with the improvements of cultivation the sublimity of the wilderness should pass away: for those scenes of solitude from which the hand of nature has never been lifted, affect the mind with a more deep toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched. Amid them the consequent associations are of God the creator-they are his undefiled works, and the mind is cast into the contemplation of eternal things.

Thomas Cole

regret nature men

If I live to be old enough, I may sit down under some bush, the last left in the utilitarian world, and feel thankful that intellect in its march has spared one vestige of the ancient forest for me to die by.

Thomas Cole

environmental rivers world

How lovely are the portals of the night, when stars come out to watch the daylight die.

Thomas Cole

stars twilight night

Overall, rocks, wood and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its innermost depths.

Thomas Cole

rocks nature water

Amid those scenes of solitude... the mind is cast into the contemplation of eternal things.

Thomas Cole

solitude scene mind

None know how often the hand of God is seen in a wilderness but them that rove it for a man's life.

Thomas Cole

wilderness men hands

If the imagination is shackled, and nothing is described but what we see, seldom will anything truly great be produced either in Painting or Poetry

Thomas Cole

painting imagination ifs

Nothing is invented and brought to perfection all at once.

Thomas Cole

invention perfection

And rural nature is full of the same quickening spirit-it is, in fact, the exhaustless mine from which the poet and the painter have brought such wondrous treasures-an unfailing fountain of intellectual enjoyment, where all may drink, and be awakened to a deeper feeling of the works of genius, and a keener perception of the beauty of our existence. For those whose days are all consumed in the low pursuits of avarice, or the gaudy frivolities of fashion, unobservant of nature's loveliness, are unconscious of the harmony of creation

Thomas Cole

fashion nature feelings

I never succeed in painting scenes, however beautiful, immediately upon returning from them. I must wait for a time to draw a veil over the common details.

Thomas Cole

waiting time beautiful

Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nat, are unconscious of the harmony of creation.

Thomas Cole

nature perfection art

The ills of discrimination are still with us. We have to continue the tenacity and vigilance of the 1960s. Racial understanding is not something we find; it's something we create.

Thomas Cole

tenacity discrimination understanding

How I have walked... day after day, and all alone, to see if there was not something among the old things which was new!

Thomas Cole

old-things all-alone ifs