Quotes about Understanding
The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.
— 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
With respect to wit, I learned that there was not much difference between the half and the whole.
— Henry David Thoreau
Not all books are as dull as their readers.
— Henry David Thoreau
Der Mensch behauptet, viel zu wissen; Doch seht nur, wie sie überschießen, Die Künste und die Wissenschaften, Die tausend Errungenschaften; Der Wind, der weht, Ist alles, was er versteht.
— Henry David Thoreau
We shall see but little if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!
— Henry David Thoreau
It often happens that a human is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being.
— Henry David Thoreau
is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely?
— 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
The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We
— Henry David Thoreau
This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. . . . When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.
— Henry David Thoreau
The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head.
— Henry David Thoreau