Henry David Thoreau Morality Quotations

Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics.

But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.

Nature is goodness crystallized.

A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.

You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.

Man's moral nature is a riddle which only eternity can solve.

Morality is how you go about getting what you want without screwing anybody to get it.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

He who eats the fruit should at least plant the seed; ay, if possible, a better seed than that whose fruit he has enjoyed.

The sort of morality which the priests inculcate is a very subtle policy, far finer than the politicians', and the world is very successfully ruled by them as the policemen.

The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The readeris nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta.... It is unquestionably one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures which have come down to us.

No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.

Whatever is, and is not ashamed to be, is good.

Good deeds are no less good because their object is unworthy.

Where there is not discernment, the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.