Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreauwas an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government, an argument for disobedience to an unjust state...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth12 July 1817
CountryUnited States of America
men levels morality
No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.
fashion law forgiving
The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of tortures to their tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for their part, did not care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all they did.
sleep effort reform
Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.
use reform moral
There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of "expediency." There is no such thing as sliding up- hill.In morals the only sliders are backsliders.
stars moon men
It becomes the moralist, too, to inquire what man might do to improve and beautify the system; what to make the stars shine more brightly, the sun more cheery and joyous, the moon more placid and content.
morality ashamed good-moral
Whatever is, and is not ashamed to be, is good.
deeds morality objects
Good deeds are no less good because their object is unworthy.
stories fables moral
All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story.
men evil deeds
If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am.
waiting advice way
Do what you know you ought to do. Why should we ever go abroad, even across the way, to ask a neighbor's advice? There is a nearerneighbor within us incessantly telling us how we should behave. But we wait for the neighbor without to tell us of some false, easier way.
humble men progress
In a thousand apparently humble ways men busy themselves to make some right take the place of some wrong,--if it is only to make abetter paste blacking,--and they are themselves so much the better morally for it.
soul may morality
Where there is not discernment, the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.
progress important reform
It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.
men thinking desire
Men have a singular desire to be good without being good for anything, because, perchance, they think vaguely that so it will be good for them in the end.