How we cite our quotes: (Essay.Paragraph)
Quote #1
It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. (Economy.10)
Thoreau wants us to challenge our beliefs, to put them to the test of personal judgment and experience. The proof is in the pudding.
Quote #2
Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact of his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis. (Economy.15)
Wisdom entails not only knowledge, but also a sense of the limits of our understanding.
Quote #3
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. (Economy.19)
Wisdom isn't about schools of philosophy or religion. It is about putting into practice the principles you believe in. You may be able to talk the talk, but you've also got to walk the walk.
Quote #4
I mean that [students] should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living. (Economy.72)
Real education can't be achieved in a classroom. It has to be lived and practiced. You know what this means: lots of field trips. (By the way, Walt Whitman totally agreed. Check out his poem "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer.")
Quote #5
I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious.
Wisdom also appears to have an "unconscious" element to it. People can be wise without knowing that they're wise or talking like a philosopher. Wisdom is synonymous with "goodness," not book learning.
Quote #6
Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. (Where I Lived.21)
Thoreau wants his readers to know that enlightenment isn't just for people who have the time and means to run off into the woods. Possibilities for discovering truth are everywhere.
Quote #7
A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. (Reading.4)
Here, Thoreau is essentially describing what he's trying to do with his book, which is both "intimate" and personal, and gestures toward the "universal" and collective. Shmoop is now thinking of changing its tagline: "Shmoop: the choicest of relics." Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?
Quote #8
Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. (Higher Laws.7)
Here's why wisdom can't be taught: words just can't do it justice. It's something that you live on a deeply personal, even perhaps unconscious ("intangible and indescribable") level.
Quote #9
What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics […] Perhaps we need only to know how his shores trend and his adjacent country or circumstances to infer his depth and concealed bottom. (Pond in Winter.13)
This is one of Thoreau's more outlandish suggestions – have you ever tried to measure your "shores"? Hmmm... maybe that's the point.
Quote #10
Extra vagance! […] I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments, for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough to lay the foundation of a true expression. (Conclusion.7)
Thoreau often uses the metaphor of waking to describe what true enlightenment feels like.