Quotes about Wisdom
One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors.
— Henry David Thoreau
I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized.
— 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
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
It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.
— Henry David Thoreau
Nor is it every apple I desire, Nor that which pleases every palate best; 'T is not the lasting Deuxan I require, Nor yet the red-cheeked Greening I request, Nor that which first beshrewed the name of wife, Nor that whose beauty caused the golden strife: No, no! bring me an apple from the tree of life.
— Henry David Thoreau
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man—you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind—I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.
— Henry David Thoreau
Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?
— 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
A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
— Henry David Thoreau