“It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.”
Life Without Principle (1863)
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Henry David Thoreau 385
1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862Related quotes
Fourth Thesis
Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)
O'Connor, Geoffrey (Director) and Theroux, Louis (Writer). (April 1, 2007). The Most Hated Family in America http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1000764/.
2000s, Insult to God Almighty (2007)
Context: Same-sex marriage, by any name, civil union or otherwise, is the ultimate smashed-mouth in-your-face insult to God Almighty, and you think He's going to let England and America and the rest of this evil world get by with it? God Almighty has not joined fags in holy wedlock. God no longer keeps America safe. America is doomed. We're getting the pants beat off of us, in Iraq, in Afghanistan. God is now America's terrorist, that's who Bush is fighting, that's the terrorist that he best be afraid of. You tweaked His nose, you jackass, you tweaked His nose! God put it in your wicked heart to start that war. That's the message we've got at the funerals of these dead soldiers. God duped you into starting a war, so He could punish you. And any preacher preaching it any other way is a lying hell-bound false prophet. So almost eighteen months now and the siege has got people eating their babies, and their small children, and each other! You're going to eat your babies! God Himself duped Bush into a no-win war, and He did that by the technique of putting a lying spirit in the mouth of all his trusted advisers, to punish America.
“To live a godly life is the best way to light up a lesson that the teacher can possibly employ.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 572.
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Priest
G.T.W. Patrick, 1889 http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/heraclitus/herpatu.htm
Variant: For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all – immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.
“As more people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers.”
“The great moral teachers of humanity were, in a way, artistic geniuses in the art of living.”
1940s, Religion and Science: Irreconcilable? (1948)
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Context: There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem
And the holy places defiled;
Peter the Hermit, scourging with words.
And among his hearers were a few good men,
Many who were evil,
And most who were neither,
Like all men in all places.
