Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Truth & Wisdom
It is a rare qualification to be able to state a fact simply and adequately, to digest some experience cleanly, to say "yes" and "no" with authority, to make a square edge, to conceive and suffer the truth to pass through us living and intact, even as a waterfowl an eel, as it flies over the meadows, thus stocking new waters.—Journal, 1 November 1851
It is with science as with ethics,—we cannot know truth by contrivance and method; the Baconian is as false as any other, and with all the helps of machinery and the arts, the most scientific will still be the healthiest and friendliest man, and possess a more perfect Indian wisdom.—"Natural History of Massachusetts"
It takes two to speak the truth,—one to speak, and another to hear.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Knowledge does not come to us by details but by lieferungs from the gods.—Journal, 7 July 1851
Let me say to you and to myself in one breath: Cultivate the tree which you have found to bear fruit in your soil. Regard not your past failures nor successes. All the past is equally a failure and a success; it is success in as much as it offers you the present opportunity.—Journal, after 16 July 1850
Love never perjures itself, nor is it mistaken.—Journal, 1845
Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man.—Walden
Music soothes the din of philosophy and lightens incessantly over the heads of sages.—Journal, 23 June 1840
Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace.—Journal, 17 September 1839
No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions.' It is indeed all that we do not know.—Journal, January 1840
