Science Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.

— Henry David Thoreau

Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies.

— Henry David Thoreau

Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.

— Henry David Thoreau

If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention

— Henry David Thoreau

The researcher is more memorable than the researched.

— Henry David Thoreau

If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends!

— Henry David Thoreau

What are the libraries of science but files of newspapers?

— Henry David Thoreau

There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span.

— Henry David Thoreau

Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.

— Henry David Thoreau

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the…

— Henry David Thoreau

“The man of science, who is not seeking for expression but for a fact to be expressed merely, studies nature as a…

— Henry David Thoreau

The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.

— Henry David Thoreau

The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if…

— Henry David Thoreau

You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress…

— Henry David Thoreau

Let us consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we pronounce thus confidently on her progress.

— Henry David Thoreau

What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is…

— Henry David Thoreau

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested…

— Henry David Thoreau

Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are ... rendered fertile by the dews of…

— Henry David Thoreau

For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is…

— Henry David Thoreau

What do the botanists know? Our lives should go between the lichen and the bark. The eye may see for the hand,…

— Henry David Thoreau

Long enough I had heard of irrelevant things; now at length I was glad to make acquaintance with the light that dwells…

— Henry David Thoreau

The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet to-day, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the…

— Henry David Thoreau

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the…

— Henry David Thoreau

Linnæus, setting out for Lapland, surveys his "comb" and "spare shirt," "leathern breeches" and "gauze cap to keep off gnats," with as…

— Henry David Thoreau

The next day the Indian told me their name for this light,--artoosoq',--and on my inquiring concerning the will-o'-the-wisp, and the like phenomena,…

— Henry David Thoreau

He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something…

— Henry David Thoreau

The true man of science will know nature better by his finer organization; he will smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than…

— Henry David Thoreau

Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will…

— Henry David Thoreau

Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested…

— Henry David Thoreau

“Whether he sleeps or wakes, whether he runs or walks, whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye,…

— Henry David Thoreau

I have just been through the process of killing a cistudo for the sake of science; but I cannot excuse myself for…

— Henry David Thoreau

It seems to us that no travelerhas ever explored them, and not with standing the wonders which science is else where revealing…

— Henry David Thoreau

“Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.”

— Henry David Thoreau

There is more religion in men's science, than there is science in their religion.

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions.

— Henry David Thoreau

When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip.

— Henry David Thoreau

It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws.

— Henry David Thoreau

We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me.

— Henry David Thoreau

A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with…

— Henry David Thoreau