A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice.

Henry David Thoreau

Quote Topics

Blades Double Double-Edged Every Every Time Our Return Stroke Time Vice Virtue

Quote Author

Henry David Thoreau
American - Author
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

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?

Henry David Thoreau

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.

William James

Science and technology are the keys to both our longevity and our demise. Our entire existence on this planet is a double-edged sword.

Rhys Darby

We encounter the grinding wheels that sharpen our mental blades many places in life. Adversity, school, parents, spiritual guides, books, experience are all sharpening teachers. As we grow older, to stay sharp we must find new grindstones to whet and sharpen our potential and keep us at our brightest, most penetrating best.

Rob Kall

A return to virtue must begin individually in our hearts and in our homes. You are the guardians of virtue.

Elaine S. Dalton

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C.S. Lewis? Virginia Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that what the virtue of wit contained was the vice of scorn.

Kevin Brockmeier

I think our path to the Olympics is a good metaphor for how you build a company. Our skill and commitment grew over time, day by day, stroke by stroke. So, sports are tied well with our entrepreneurial pursuits because you train for a few years, but there is no guarantee that you will succeed.

Tyler Winklevoss

There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy; and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at the same time a compliment to it.

William Hazlitt

Technology is, of course, a double edged sword. Fire can cook our food but also burn us.

Jason Silva

Nearly every moment of every day we have the opportunity to give something to someone else—our time, our love, our resources. I have always found more joy in giving when I did not expect anything in return.

S. Truett Cathy

We are human less by virtue of our ideal goals than by the vice of our inferiority.

James Hillman

Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.

Blaise Pascal

You must come to terms with your wholeself. the wholeness which exceeds all our virtue and all our vice.

Ursula K. Le Guin

The true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the heavenly spirit within.