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Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Wisdom

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Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Travel, Character

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

Henry David Thoreau
Funny, Wisdom, Truth
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

Henry David Thoreau
Happiness, Wisdom, Money

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

Henry David Thoreau
Valentines Day, Wise, Wisdom
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.110, BookBaby

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Henry David Thoreau
Wise, Wisdom, Business
'Walden' (1854) 'Economy'

A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Gold, Surface
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Civil Disobedience and Other Essays”, p.80, Courier Corporation

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

Henry David Thoreau
Wise, Wisdom, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.109, BookBaby

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.

Henry David Thoreau
Wise, Wisdom, Ignorance
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.109, BookBaby

Is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life?

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Wisdom
Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.172, David M Gross

What we need to know in any case is very simple.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Knowledge, Simple
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.90, Xist Publishing

With wisdom we shall learn liberality.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Generosity, Liberality
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.211, Penguin

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Country, Men
'Walden' (1854) 'Economy'

The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful.

Henry David Thoreau
Beautiful, Patience, Wisdom
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.63

English sense has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Common Sense, Common
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.105, Xist Publishing

Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Nature, Science
Henry David Thoreau (1960). “H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal”, p.221, Courier Corporation

You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Loneliness, Men
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.173, Courier Corporation

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Self Reliance, Should
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Wisdom, Men
Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.7, Hayes Barton Press

Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment, and childlike mirth-fulness. If you would know aught, be gay before it.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Gay, Mirth
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.15, Courier Corporation

What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly. I do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the verge of insanity by their Friendship for one another. They are not often transfigured and translated by love in each other's presence. I do not observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a man.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Wise, Wisdom
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.110, Penguin

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.

Henry David Thoreau
Wise, Wisdom, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.927, Delphi Classics

It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the deliberate reader. To the practical they will be common sense, and to the wise wisdom; as either the traveler may wet his lips, or an army may fill its water-casks at a full stream.

Henry David Thoreau
Wise, Wisdom, Army
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Illustrated "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"”, p.147, Princeton University Press

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Mean, Men
Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.27, Cambridge University Press

Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual world ... in spirits which the very bullfrogs in our meadows would blackball. Their evil genius is seeing how low it can degrade them. The hooting of owls, the croaking of frogs, is celestial wisdom in comparison.

Henry David Thoreau
Spiritual, Wisdom, Believe
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.153, Jazzybee Verlag

To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense,it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Truth, Writing
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.42, Xist Publishing

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