Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Experience

• When it's time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Motivational, Death, Greatness

• We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Home, Adventure

  Henry David Thoreau, Laura Ross (2009). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods: Bold-faced Ideas for Living a Truly Transcendent Life”, p.273, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

• How novel and original must be each new mans view of the universe - for though the world is so old - and so many books have been written - each object appears wholly undescribed to our experience - each field of thought wholly unexplored - the whole world is an America - a New World.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Book, Views, America

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.137, Penguin

• I should say that the useful results of science had accumulated, but that there had been no accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for posterity; for knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Knowledge, Science, Men

  "Journeys, Adventures & Life in Harmony with Nature".

• Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Art, Experience

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.31, Courier Corporation

• I think that no experience which I have today comes up to, or is comparable with, the experiences of my boyhood.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thinking, Experience, Today

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.47, Courier Corporation

• Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp ? are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?

  Henry David Thoreau

  One Day, Experience, Juice

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.661, Simon and Schuster

• In the summer we lay up a stock of experiences for the winter, as the squirrel of nuts?something for conversation in winter evenings.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Summer, Winter, Squirrels

  Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861”, p.74, New York Review of Books

• Who is old enough to have learned from experience?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Experience, Enough

  Henry David Thoreau, Bradford Torrey, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (1906). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau ....”

• The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Experience, Development, Courses

  Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.243, David M Gross

• The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Experience, Savages

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.26, Courier Corporation

• We can conceive of nothing more fair than something which we have experienced.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Imagination, Experience, Fairs

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.269, Xist Publishing

• We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ideas, Experience, Observation

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.203, Simon and Schuster

• A man sees only what concerns him.... How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Eye, Men, Mind

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.203, Simon and Schuster

• Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more modern. It is written as if the specator should be thinking of the backside of the picture on the wall, or as if the author expected that the dead would be his readers, and wished to detail to them their own experience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Thinking, Air

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.549, Simon and Schuster

• Christianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the morning with joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but, thank heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent's shadow. Our mother's faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mother, Dream, Song

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.71, Delphi Classics

• We are superior to the joy we experience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Joy, Experience, Superiors

  Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1865). “Letters to Various Persons”, p.103

• It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Experience, Wealth, Devotion

  Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.114, Cambridge University Press

• We are older by faith than by experience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Faith, Experience

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.234, Simon and Schuster

• The experience of every past moment but belies the faith of each present.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Past, Experience, Moments

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.73, Jazzybee Verlag

• The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and farehard in many respects; and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beautiful, Animal, Imagination

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.131, Graphic Arts Books

• Knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Communication, Knowledge, Men

  Michael Benjamin Berger, Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Thoreau's Late Career and The Dispersion of Seeds: The Saunterer's Synoptic Vision”, p.83, Camden House

• The scholar is not apt to make his most familiar experience come gracefully to the aid of his expression.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Expression, Experience, Aids

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.90, Jazzybee Verlag

• It is after we get home that we really go over the mountain, if ever.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Home, Experience, Mountain

  Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1865). “Letters to Various Persons”, p.165

• Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Summer, Past

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.278

You May Also Like:

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Walt Whitman

Margaret Fuller

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Leo Tolstoy

Herman Melville

Mahatma Gandhi