Henry David Thoreau Lear Quotations

How could youths better learn to live than by once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would educate their minds as much as mathematics

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.

The Canadians of those days, at least, possessed a roving spirit of adventure which carried them further, in exposure to hardship and danger, than ever the New England colonist went, and led them, though not to clear and colonize the wilderness, yet

We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; -- for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. -- Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.

I have learned that even the smallest house can be a home.

I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot.

All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.

With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?

I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.

I have learned this at least by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dream, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagines, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

No human being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.