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 ColeIt 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 ColeThe 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 ColeAnd 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