We boast of our system of education, but why stop at schoolmasters and schoolhouses? We are all schoolmasters, and our schoolhouse is the universe. To attend chiefly to the desk or schoolhouse while we neglect the scenery in which it is placed is absurd. If we do not look out we shall find our find schoolhouse standing in a cow-yard at last.
—Journal, 15 October 1859We can possibly get along with a neighbor, even with a bedfellow, whom we respect but very little; but as soon as it comes to this, that we do not respect ourselves, then we do not get along at all.
—Thoreau to H. G. O. Blake, 10 April 1853We can tolerate all philosophies, Atomists, Pneumatologists, Atheists, Theists,—Plato, Aristotle, Leucippus, Democritus, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, and Confucius. It is the attitude of these men, more than any communication which they make, that attracts us.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversWe cannot see anything unless we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else.
—Journal, 4 November 1858We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.
—WaldenWe constantly anticipate repose. Yet it surely can only be the repose that is in entire and healthy activity. It must be a repose without rust.
—Journal, 13 December 1841We could get no further into the Aeneid than—atque altae moenia Romae,—and the wall of high Rome, before we were constrained to reflect by what myriad tests a work of genius has to be tried; that Virgil, away in Rome, two thousand years off, should have to unfold his meaning, the inspiration of Italian vales, to the pilgrim on New England hills.
—"A Walk to Wachusett"We discover a new world every time that we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow.
—Journal, 8 January 1860We do not learn by inference and deduction, and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.
—"Natural History of Massachusetts"We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversWe do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man . . . The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon.
—WaldenWe falsely attribute to men a determined character; putting together all their yesterdays and averaging them, we presume we know them.
—Journal, 28 April 1841We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge.
—"Walking"We have the silver and the golden birch. This is like a fair, flaxen-haired sister of the dark-complexioned black birch, with golden ringlets. How lustily it takes hold of the swampy soil, and braces itself! And here flows a dark cherry-wood or wine-colored brook over the iron-red sands in the somber swamp,—swampy wine. In an undress, this tree. Ah, time will come when these will be all gone.
—Journal, 4 January 1853We have used up all our inherited freedom, like the young bird the albumen in the egg. It is not an era of repose. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them.
—Journal, 16 June 1854We learn by the January thaw that the winter is intermittent and are reminded of other seasons. The back of the winter is broken.
—Journal, 14 February 1851We like to read a good description of no thing so well as that which we already know the best, as our friend, or ourselves even.
—Journal, 13 October 1860