What are magnetic fields?

Famous quotes containing the words magnetic and/or fields:

    We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)