Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Evil
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We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice. Where is the skillful swordsman who can give clean wounds, and not rip up his work with the other edge?
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What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them.
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There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.
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If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear; his brave back would go a-begging.
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They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy evil, that they may no longer have have it to regret.
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A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper.
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I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.
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The tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.
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There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
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So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry?
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It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself.
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It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
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A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
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Since all things are good, men fail at last to distinguish which is the bane and which the antidote.
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Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual world ... in spirits which the very bullfrogs in our meadows would blackball. Their evil genius is seeing how low it can degrade them. The hooting of owls, the croaking of frogs, is celestial wisdom in comparison.
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I saw a delicate flower had grown up two feet high between the horses' feet and the wheel-track. Which Dakin's and Maynard's wagons had Passed over many a time. An inch more to the right or left had sealed its fate, Or an inch higher. Yet it lived and flourished, As much as if it had a thousand acres Of untrodden space around it, and never Knew the danger it incurred. It did not borrow trouble, nor invite an Evil fate by apprehending it.
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No human being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.
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All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad anddoes me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.
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There is no ill which may not be dissipated, like the dark, if you let in a stronger light upon it.
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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.
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