The value of any statement may be measured by its susceptibility to be expressed in popular language.

March 2.

If the sciences are protected from being carried by assault by the mob, by a palisade or chevaux de-frise of technical terms, so also the learned man may sometimes ensconce himself and conceal his little true knowledge behind hard names.

Perhaps the value of any statement may be measured by its susceptibility to be expressed in popular language.

The greatest discoveries can be reported in the newspapers.

I thought it was a great advantage both to speakers and hearers when, at the meetings of scientific gentlemen at the Marlborough Chapel, the representatives of all departments of science were required to speak intelligibly to those of other departments, therefore dispensing with the most peculiarly technical terms.

A man may be permitted to state a very meagre truth to a fellow student, using technical terms, but when he stands up before the mass of men, he must have some distinct and important truth to communicate; and the most important it will always be the most easy to communicate to the vulgar.

If anybody thinks a thought, how sure we are to hear of it! Though it be only a half-thought or half a delusion, it gets into the newspapers, and all the country rings with it.

But how much clearing of land and plowing and planting and building of stone wall is done every summer without being reported in the newspapers or in literature! Agricultural literature is not as extensive as the fields, and the farmer's almanac is never a big book.

And yet I think that the history (or poetry) of one farm from a state of nature to the highest state of cultivation comes nearer to being the true subject of a modern epic than the siege of Jerusalem or any such paltry and ridiculous resource to which some have thought men reduced.

Was it Coleridge? The Works and Days of Hesiod, the Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil, are but leaves out of that epic.

The turning a swamp into a garden, though the poet may not think it an improvement, is at any rate an enterprise interesting to all men.

A wealthy farmer who has money to let was here yesterday, who said that fourteen years ago a man came to him to hire two hundred dollars for thirty days.

He told him that he should have it if he would give proper security, but the other, thinking it exorbitant to require security for so short a term, went away.

But he soon returned and gave the security.

“And,” said the farmer, "he has punctually paid me twelve dollars a year ever since. I have never said a word to him about the principle.”

It will soon be forgotten, in these days of stoves, that we used to roast potatoes in the ashes, after the Indian fashion of cooking.

The farmer increases the extent of the habitable earth.

He makes soil.

That is an honorable occupation.

 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 2, 1852

Perhaps the value of any statement may be measured by its susceptibility to be expressed in popular language. See December 16, 1859 (“How much better to describe your object in fresh English words rather than in conventional Latinisms!”)