All this worldly wisdom was once the unnameable heresy of some wise man. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
What wisdom, what warning can prevail against gladness? There is no law so strong that a little gladness may not transgress. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“A wise man has doubts even in his best moments. Real truth is always accompanied by hesitations. If I could not hesitate,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively, as if… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either rhymed or in some way musically measured,--is, in form as well… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Any man will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The woodchopper reads the wisdom of the ages recorded on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe with it.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
What the essential difference between man and woman is, that they should be thus attracted to one another, no one has satisfactorily… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared with wisdom and manhood? To omit his other behavior, see whata work this… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“Men say they know many things; But lo! they have taken wings, — The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances; The wind that… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
