Quotes About Values

The Church has much improved within a few years; but the Press is almost, without exception, corrupt. I believe that, in this country, the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence, than the Church did in its worst period. We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaoer

Yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!

Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes

I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called 'a handsome property'..on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to Brighton, which place he would reach some time in the morning.

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.

Si un hombre pasea por el bosque por placer todos los días, corre el riesgo de que le tomen por un haragán, pero si dedica el día entero a especular cortando bosques y dejando la tierra árida antes de tiempo, se le estima por ser un ciudadano trabajador y emprendedor. ¡Como si una ciudad no tuviera más interés en sus bosques que el de talarlos!

A man is not a good man to me because he will feed me if I should be starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I should ever fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that will do as much.

Si tuviera que vender mis mañanas y mis tardes a la sociedad, como hace la mayoría, estoy seguro de que no me quedaría nada por lo que vivir... No hay mayor equivocación que consumir la mayor parte de la vida en ganarse el sustento

there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

Everywhere the means is erected into the end, and the end itself is forgotten.

Just as there is no technical improvement that would not hurt someone, so there is no change in public taste or morals, even for the better, that would not hurt someone.

Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.

You young men have too many jokes. When there are no jokes you've nothing left.

Money is a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet

Don't question your conscience so much--it will get out of tune like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions.

He had sprung from a rigid Puritan stock, and had been brought up to think much more intently of the duties of this life than of its privileges and pleasures.

Whether or no being hopelessly vulgar is being 'bad' is a question for the metaphysicians.

him—ce genie-la. Every nation has its own ideals of every

But, after all, the opinions of our friends are not what we love them for, and therefore I don't see why they should be what we hate them for.

With all your brag and boasting, where has your Christianity succeeded without the sword? Yours is a religion preached in the name of luxury. It is all hypocrisy that I have heard in this country. All this prosperity, all this from Christ! Those who call upon Christ care nothing but to amass riches! Christ would not find a stone on which to lay his head among you … You are not Christians. Return to Christ!

Along with every right thing to do is a right way to do it.