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Men do not fail commonly for want of knowledge, but for want of prudence to give wisdom the preference.
Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Knowledge
Give
Giving
Commonly
Men
Prudence
Preference
Fail
Failing
Wisdom
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.
Henry David Thoreau
For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their affairs indifferent.
Henry David Thoreau
Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society.
Henry David Thoreau
The monster is never just there where we think he is. What is truly monstrous is our cowardice and sloth.
Henry David Thoreau
I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much what I got by going to Canada was a cold.
Henry David Thoreau
We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature is an admirable schoolmistress.
Henry David Thoreau
Even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development.
Henry David Thoreau
No man's thoughts are new, but the style of their expression is the never-failing novelty which cheers and refreshes men. If we were to answer the question, whether the mass of men, as we know them, talk as the standard authors and reviewers write, or rather as this man writes, we should say that he alone begins to write their language at all.
Henry David Thoreau
My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster.
Henry David Thoreau
The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.
Henry David Thoreau
As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.
Henry David Thoreau
Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.
Henry David Thoreau
A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.
Henry David Thoreau
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
Henry David Thoreau
It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
Henry David Thoreau
We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
Henry David Thoreau
At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house.
Henry David Thoreau
Summer passes into autumn in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.
Henry David Thoreau
