“ Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. ”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854). copy citation
| Author | Henry David Thoreau |
|---|---|
| Source | Walden |
| Topic | failure experience |
| Date | 1854 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | https://www.gutenberg.org/files/205/205-h/205-h.htm |
Context
“By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that “there was a king’s son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived.”
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