“I
am interested in an indistinct prospect, a distant view, a mere suggestion
often, revealing an almost wholly new world to me. I rejoice to get, and am apt
to present, a new view. But I find it impossible to present my view to most
people. In effect, it would seem that they do not wish to take a new view in
any case. Heat lightning flashes, which reveal a distant horizon to our
twilight eyes. But my fellows simply assert that it is not broad day, which
everybody knows, and fail to perceive the phenomenon at all. I am willing to
pass for a fool in my own desperate, perhaps foolish, efforts to persuade them
to lift the veil from off the possible and future, which they hold down with
both their hands, before their eyes. The most valuable communication or news
consists of hints and suggestions. When a truth comes to be known and accepted,
it begins to be bad taste to repeat it. Every individual constitution is a
probe employed in a new direction, and a wise man will attend to each one’s
report.”
—From
the Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), July 29, 1857.