Quotes from Thomas Cole

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Over all, rocks, wood, and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths.

Those scenes of solitude from which the hand of nature have 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 contemplation of eternal things.

Though American scenery is destitute of many of those circumstances that give value to the European, still it has features, and glorious ones, unknown to Europe...the most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness

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