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 ThoreauConcord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.
Henry David ThoreauWe communicate like the burrows of foxes, in silence and darkness, under ground. We are undermined by faith and love.
Henry David ThoreauWhen the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him... a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
Henry David ThoreauIt is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.
Henry David ThoreauIt is remarkable, but on the whole, perhaps, not to be lamented, that the world is so unkind to a new book. Any distinguished traveler who comes to our shores is likely to get more dinners and speeches of welcome than he can well dispose of, but the best books, if noticed at all, meet with coldness and suspicion, or, what is worse, gratuitous, off-hand criticism.
Henry David Thoreau