Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Ethics & Morality
What are the natural features which make a township handsome? A river, with its waterfalls and meadows, a lake, a hill, a cliff or individual rocks, a forest, and ancient trees standing singly. Such things are beautiful; they have a high use which dollars and cents never represent. If the inhabitants of a town were wise, they would seek to preserve these things, though at a considerable expense; for such things educate far more than any hired teachers or preachers, or any at present recognized system of school education.—Journal, 3 January 1861
What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals.—Thoreau to H.G.O Blake, 27 March 1848
What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?—Journal, 16 February 1851
What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm. It brings men together in crowds and mobs in bar-rooms and elsewhere, but it does not deserve the name of virtue.—Journal, 23 October 1852
Why will men be such fools as to trust to lawyers for a moral reform?—Journal, 16 June 1854
You cannot rob a man of anything which he will miss.—Journal, 5 July 1840
You may find a cape which runs six miles into the sea that has not a man of moral courage upon it.—Journal, 16 November 1858
