Henry David Thoreau Quotations: EDUCATION
The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.—Walden
The entertaining a single thought of a certain elevation makes all men of one religion. It is always some base alloy that creates the distinction of sects.—Journal, 8 August 1852
The forest looked like a firm grass sward, and the effect of these lakes in its midst has been well compared, by one who has since visited this same spot, to that of a "mirror broken into a thousand fragments, and wildly scattered over the grass, reflecting the full blaze of the sun."—The Maine Woods
The grammarian is often one who can neither cry nor laugh, yet thinks that he can express human emotions. So the posture-masters tell you how you shall walk—turning your toes out, perhaps, excessively—but so the beautiful walkers are not made.—Journal, 2 January 1859
The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have.—Walden
The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.—"Walking"
The laborer whose body is weary does not require the same food with the scholar whose brain is weary.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 2 May 1848
The man of most science is the man most alive, whose life is the greatest event.—Journal, 6 May 1854
The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The reader is nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.—"Life without Principle"
