I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
Source: An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, book 1 (1690)
Topic
Thought's paradox appears early in this collection: Einstein wants to know God's thoughts; the rest are mere details. The ambition is extreme — thought aimed at the structure of the universe — and it sets a standard the other quotes negotiate with. Lincoln's rueful observation that books show you your original thoughts aren't very new is the corrective: thought feels private and novel but mostly rehearses what has already been said. Johnson's birthday-thought entry is the most personal: returning years make him think in ways the world conspires to avoid. Hugo's trinity of intelligence, imagination, and memory — wife, mistress, servant — gives thought a domestic sociology that is half taxonomy and half confession. Twain's freedom-of-thought passage reminds us that thought in society is never fully free — it requires the political structure that makes it possible. What the collection traces is the distance between the private experience of thinking — vivid, original-feeling, urgent — and the humbling record that most of what we think has been thought before, and thought better.
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization.
Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that, being nothing, art every thing!