“A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.”

— Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Thursday

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view." by Henry David Thoreau?

Henry David Thoreau photo

Henry David Thoreau 385

1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

Related quotes

“Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

"James Clarence Mangan" (1902) http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~ehrlich/382/MANGAN1, a lecture on Mangan delivered at the Literary and Historical Society, University College, Dublin (1 February 1902) and printed in the college magazine St. Stephen's
Context: Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality. It speaks of what seems fantastic and unreal to those who have lost the simple intuitions which are the test of reality; and, as it is often found at war with its age, so it makes no account of history, which is fabled by the daughters of memory.

“If your language lacks poetry and paradox, it’s unequal to the task of accounting for actuality. Otherwise anything radically new is literally unspeakable.”

Bob Black (1951) American anarchist

The Libertarian as Conservative (1984)

“True poetry was never speech, but always song.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

What is a Poem - Endword - Selected Poems (1926)

“Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Letter to Ellen O'Leary (3 February 1889)

“Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses. Poets are the policemen of language; they are always arresting those old reprobates the words.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Letter to Ellen O'Leary (3 February 1889)

“Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Ignorance of the Learned"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“There are two things in the world that can never get on together—religion and common sense. Religion deals with the next life, common sense with this; religion points to the sky, common sense to the earth; religion is all imagination, common sense all reason; religion deals with what nobody can understand, common sense with what everybody can understand; religion gives us no return for our investments but flash notes on the bank of expectation, common sense gives us good interest and full security for our capital. They are as opposite as two things can possibly be, and they are always at strife. Religion is always trying to fill the world with delusions, and common sense is always trying to drive them away. Religion says Live for the next world, and common sense says Live for this.”

George William Foote (1850–1915) British secularist and journal editor

"Christianity and Common Sense" http://www.ftarchives.net/foote/flowers/114commonsense.htm, p. 114
Flowers of Freethought (1893)

“I always lacked common sense when taken by surprise.”

Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey

Variant: No, thank you, I don't mind the rain,' I said. I always lacked common sense when taken by surprise.
Source: Agnes Grey

“Between religion's "this is" and poetry's "but suppose this is" there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Anagogic Phase: Symbol as Monad

“Lord Dufferin (Governor General) – “as pure as crystal, and as true as steel, with lots of common sense.””

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

Thomson 1960, p.211
His Character

Related topics