“The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.”

Life Without Principle (1863)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence." by Henry David Thoreau?
Henry David Thoreau photo
Henry David Thoreau 385
1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

Related quotes

Thomas Edison photo
Baron d'Holbach photo

“Everything that passes in the world, proves to us, in the clearest manner, that it is not governed by an intelligent being.”

Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist

Good Sense, or Natural Ideas vs. Supernatural

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi photo
Max Weber photo
James K. Morrow photo

“To George, Overwhite still seemed like a windbag, but he was obviously a resourceful and intelligent one, a windbag woven of the finest material.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), Chapter 14, “In Which the Nuclear Warriors have Their Day in Court” (p. 183)

G. H. Hardy photo
Martin Firrell photo

“When the world’s run by fools it’s the duty of intelligence to disobey.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

Quoted in The Guardian (25 February 2006).

Judith Martin photo
Buckminster Fuller photo

“The question of integrity will get finer and finer and more delicate and more beautiful.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Only Integrity is Going to Count (1983)

Hermann Hesse photo

“No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that — one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.”

Source: Demian (1919), p. 9 Prologue
Context: I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams — like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.
Each man's life represents the road toward himself, and attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that — one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.

Related topics