“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.”
Documented source
Every quote here is traced to a documented source. How we verify →
About this line
A touchstone was the dark stone jewelers used to test gold. Thoreau borrows the image for dreams: not escape, but assay — the truest test of a person is what they reach toward when nothing is at stake and no one is watching.
Why we carry this line
Not until I read about touchstones did I fully understand this quote. For all the dreamers, me included.
The design
Jewelers tested gold by drawing it across a black stone. The color of the streak told them if it was real. That stone was the touchstone.
Here, the black of the shirt and the mug is the stone. The warm matte gold strokes under “characters.” are the streak. The character, tested.
On the mug, the design is printed on both sides.
What happened next
In 1853, Thoreau’s publisher sent back the unsold copies of his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. They came in a wagon: 706 of the 1,000 printed.
That day he wrote in his journal: “I now have a library of nearly 900 volumes, over 700 of which I wrote myself.”
He kept writing. Walden came out the next year.
