Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm.

The great moral teachers of humanity were in a way artistic geniuses in the art of living.

The teacher who would be true to his mission and accomplish the most good, must give prominence to moral as well as intellectual instruction.

It's my opinion that every one I know has morals, though I wouldn't like to ask. I know I have. But I'd rather teach them than practice them any day. "Give them to others"-that's my motto.

Priests have to have the right to say that a sin is a sin.

The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity and many deeds of the past, in order to strengthen his character thereby.

The great want of our race is perfect educators to train new-born minds, who are infallible teachers of what is right and true.

Let me just share with you something. Jesus makes this quite clear: there's never been a real teacher except One, and it's Christ. There's never been a real prophet: they're all types of One greater than themselves - Christ.

The pulpit only "teaches" to be honest; the market-place "trains" to overreaching and fraud; and teaching has not a tithe of the efficiency of training. Christ never wrote a tract, but He went about doing good.

Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.

To try too hard to make people good is one way to make them worse. The only way to make them good is to be good, remembering well the beam and the mote.

Novels do not force their fair readers to sin, they only instruct them how to sin; the consequences of which are fully detailed, and not in a way calculated to seduce any but weak but weak minds; few of their heroines are happily disposed of.

It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.

A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.

Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature, this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

Whilst that the childe is young, let him be instructed in vertue and lytterature.

Preaching has always been the business of the Asiatics. The Western people are grand in organisation, social institutions, armies, governments, etc.; but when it comes to preaching religion, they cannot come near the Asiatic, whose business it has been all the time, and he knows it, and he does not use too much machinery.

Hillary Clinton was personally presiding over the dissolution of moral authority - particularly applied to presidents - because she looked the other way, because she tolerated it.

All preachers of morality, as also all theologians have a bad habit in common: all of them try to persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical cure is necessary.

I believe that in this way the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God.

The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.

I was raised by my grandmother. She instilled everything into me. She taught me right from wrong from day one. I remembered everyday, being 4 or 5 years old, and walking to school, she would be like, Raise your right hand and stay on the right side of the street and make sure you do the right thing in school.

Sportsmanship, next to the Church, is the greatest teacher of morals.