"What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared with wisdom and manhood? To omit his other behavior, see whata work this comparatively unread and unlettered man wrote within six weeks. Where is our professor of belles-lettres, or of logic and rhetoric, who can write so well?
More by Henry David Thoreau
“Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?”
“Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.”
“Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.”
More on Wisdom
“No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did; and no day was every more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm.”
“For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.”
“It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. Do you have to salt your truth so heavily that it does not even-quench thirst any more?”
More on Learning
“I shall adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views.”
“When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.”
“I like to date schoolteachers. If you do something wrong, they make you do it over again.”