“I, standing twenty miles off, see a crimson cloud in the horizon. You tell me it is a mass of vapor which absorbs all other rays and reflects the red, but that is nothing to the purpose, for this red vision excites me, stirs my blood, makes my thoughts flow, and I have new and indescribable fancies, and you have not touched the secret of that influence. If there is not something mystical in your explanation, some-thing inexplainable to the understanding, some elements of mystery, it is quite insufficient. If there is nothing in it which speaks to my imagination, what boots it? What sort of science is that which enriches the understanding, but robs the imagination? ... if we knew all things thus mechanically merely, should we know anything really?”

— Henry Thoreau (c.1850) [1]

“Nothing is so much to be feared as fear; god himself likes atheism better.”

— Henry Thoreau (c.1850), Publication [2]

“There is more religion in man’s science than there is science in his religion.”

— Henry Thoreau (c.1850), Publication [3]