Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Education
One studies books of science merely to learn the language of naturalists—to be able to communicate with them.—Journal, 23 March 1853
Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.—Walden
The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do.—Walden
The audience are never tired of hearing how far the wind carried some man, woman, or child, or family Bible, but they are immediately tired if you undertake to give them a scientific account of it.—Journal, 4 February 1852
The best way to correct a mistake is to make it right.—Thoreau to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 24 January 1843
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 poet says the proper study of mankind is man. I say study to forget all that—take wider views of the universe.—Journal, 2 April 1852
