Quotes by Thoreau, Henry David

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce >>

The language of friendship is not words but meanings. >>

City life is millions of people being lonesome together. >>

Quotations about Science and Scientists

Science is nothing but perception. >>

The great tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis >>

Science is always wrong, it never solves a problem without creating te >>

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveler, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness.

Thoreau, Henry David