“ It is beautiful when prosperity is present with intellect, and when sailing as it were with a prosperous wind, actions are performed looking to virtue ”
Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). copy citation
| Author | Henry David Thoreau |
|---|---|
| Source | A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers |
| Topic | action virtue |
| Date | 1849 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4232/4232-h/4232-h.htm |
Context
“Which barge was as a man’s thought, After his pleasure to him brought, The queene herself accustomed aye In the same barge to play, It needed neither mast ne rother, I have not heard of such another, No master for the governance, Hie sayled by thought and pleasaunce, Without labor east and west, All was one, calme or tempest.”
So we sailed this afternoon, thinking of the saying of Pythagoras, though we had no peculiar right to remember it, “It is beautiful when prosperity is present with intellect, and when sailing as it were with a prosperous wind, actions are performed looking to virtue; just as a pilot looks to the motions of the stars.” All the world reposes in beauty to him who preserves equipoise in his life, and moves serenely on his path without secret violence; as he who sails down a stream, he has only to steer, keeping his bark in the middle, and carry it round the falls.”
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