"There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.?
-Walden, Henry David Thoreau
There are two ways that this quotation might be interpreted, one way focuses on a person's goodness, or lack of, and the other concerns benign or malicious intentions.
The quotation could be interpreted to mean that it is a sadder thing for a 'good' person to decline into immorality than for a 'bad' person to do something wicked. This interpretation of the quote can be illustrated by the book The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorian Gray enters the story as an enchanting, vivacious, almost cherubic youth, comparable to the beautiful Greek god Adonis. As the story progresses, Dorian gets drawn into a habit of hedonism, financial waste, and self destruction, and this moral decline is paralleled by gradual distortion of his once beautiful portrait. At the end of the book, after Dorian had fallen so far as to commit murder, he is shocked to find that his image has become bloated and hideous, and in a fit of outrage, he stabs his portrait, therefore killing himself. All in all, Dor...
...o die, everything is growing farther and farther apart toward a state of decay; and as it goes, so goes hope, so goes man’s faith in what he can see, think, and reason. This is the hard reality that becomes apparent; if ethical action is limited to man’s thought about morals and principles that are, according to man, “absolute”, then man may be the most arrogant and ignorant of God’s creation.
must read it and try to understand it. Though this quote can relate to a persons personality, it also might not relate to a person at all. All people are different and think differently than others. Almost everybody in the world has a different understanding of what is wrong and what is right,
that “man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the
1 You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you’re going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it.” This quote was stated in Flannery O’ Connors story of A Good Man is Hard to Find, she was a catholic all her life which motivated her to write stories and influence them. In A Good Man is Hard to Find, there were many examples of religion revealed in her literature such as the one presented and more examples followed. 2 The statement above is when The Misfit spoke this near the end of the story, just before sending the children’s mother, the baby, and June Star into the woods to be killed. 2 The Misfit tells the grandmother that he had been punished for a crime that he can’t remember, and this is the lesson he has taken away from it.
Although his actions were admirable and act as evidence to integrity, the writings of Henry David Thoreau and Emerson reveal a haughty and pretentious individual. Thoreau's courage was noble. He was quick to immerse himself in his beliefs
“If death is an evil at all, it cannot be because of its positive features, but only because of what it deprives us of.” (p. 113)
David Henry Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817 and lived nearly all of his life in Concord, Massachusetts, a small town about twenty miles west of Boston. He was the third child with his older siblings John and Helen and younger sister Sophia. His father John was a shopkeeper. John moved his family to Chelmsford and Boston, following business opportunities. In 1823 the family moved back to Concord where John established a pencil-making concern that eventually brought financial stability to the family. Thoreau’s mother, Cynthia Dunbar, took in boarders from rented out sections of the house to help keep ends meet. Thoreau’s older siblings, Helen and John, Jr were both schoolteachers; when it was decided that their brother should further
Essentially, this means that actions, although they may appear good, may not be contributing to a person flourishing (making them a false good), and this is spiritual apathy. Spiritual apathy can be manifested in several daughter vices of despair, torpor, pusillanimity, rancor, malice, letting the mind wander. Aquinas goes on to divide these daughter vices into two categories: The first is withdrawing from things and includes despair, torpor, pusillanimity, rancor, malice; The second involves Turing to other things that are more pleasurable which includes letting the mind wander (370). It is through these daughter vices that spiritual apathy tends to appear in everyday
Henry David Thoreau was a poet, social philosopher, and educator in the early to mid- 1800s (Hampton). He graduated from Harvard University in 1837 and, upon his return to his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson, also a philosopher and poet (Hampton, “Ralph Waldo Emerson”). Emerson was also the leader of the Transcendentalist movement which was based on the idea that people should lead by example -- social reform begins with the individual, not the government -- and that the movement should be peaceful (Woodlief, Ruehl). Thoreau agreed with this approach until the United States invaded Mexico in May, 1846 (Brown, Witherell). Opposed to slavery, Thoreau saw the invasion of Mexico as an attempt by the government to extend slavery westward. In his essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” published in 1849 with the original title, “Resistance to Civil Government,” Thoreau protests against the government and states that is a man’s duty to rise up against the government when the government commits a wrong (Thoreau). In his writings, Thoreau uses the three rhetorical approaches of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos in his attempts to persuade his readers to his point of view (Heinrichs).
The author's purpose for having this quote is to say if God doesn't discriminate then you shouldn't either. To elaborate on this no one should be looked down
“The grey-ey’d morn smiles o the frowning night, Chequ’ring the eastern clouds with streaks of light … Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; And vice sometime’s by action dignified.” (Shakespeare, page 84).
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.” In this quote, Eleanor is expressing that you should always take advantage of the universal human right to be an individual. From time immemorial, many of those who have led meaningful and enjoyable lives have shared one particular trait in common: individualism. Chris McCandless and Thoreau were no different, they both embodied individualism and as a result they have unknowingly inspired generations.
What he is also saying in this passage is that one’s actions in such a situation should be selfless. One should not do good deeds for his or her own personal benefit. He or she should be doing so because it is his or her own personal duty.
An American Author, Transcendentalist and tax resister, Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord Massachusetts, and lived there most of his life. He was opposed to many of the things that went on in our society and debated many issues in his life. Two of these major issues are , the Mexican American War and the implement of Slavery in our society. This was the reason for many of his writings include “Slavery in Massachusetts” and “Civil Disobedience” where he wrote about his principles and views against the U.S government and their involvement in the Mexican American War and the evil of Slavery. Thoreau opposed to these because they promote unjust government practices which he was strongly against.
"There's a vast difference, so it seems to me, between true piety and hypocrisy: How do you fail to see it, may I ask? Is not a face quite different from a mask? Cannot sincerity and cunning art, reality an...