Henry David Thoreau Learning Quotations

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.

With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?

I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

No human being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.