Quotes about Learning
A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.
— Henry David Thoreau
I am thinking by what long discipline and at what cost a man learns to speak simply at last.
— Henry David Thoreau
An artist is first an amateur.
— Henry David Thoreau
I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
— Henry David Thoreau
Live free, child of the mist—and with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist.
— Henry David Thoreau
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! 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.
— Henry David Thoreau
Books which are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand.
— Henry David Thoreau
One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors.
— Henry David Thoreau
Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing.
— Henry David Thoreau
Confucius said, To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
— Henry David Thoreau
I think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a b abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading.
— Henry David Thoreau
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have
— Henry David Thoreau