What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health! — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The eye which can appreciate the naked and absolute beauty of a scientific truth is far more rare than that which is… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George the Fourth and continue… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
On the whole, my respect for my fellow-men, except as one may outweigh a million, is not being increased these days… Such… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,--that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Four things to think about. 1. Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has as yet been sung. The ancients had… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
So behave that the odor of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that when we behold or scent… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not tempted to explore it,--to penetrate to the shores… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In war, in some sense, lies the very genius of law. It is law creative and active; it is the first principle… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or inlet, yet unexplored by him. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of "expediency." There is no such thing as sliding… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority. The marines and the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
How wholesome winter is, seen far or near; how good, above all mere sentimental, warm-blooded, short-lived, soft-hearted, moral goodness, commonly so called.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“Men say they know many things; But lo! they have taken wings, — The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances; The wind that… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
