Theodore Parker Quotes & Sayings

Justice is the idea of God, the ideal of man, the rule of conduct writ in the nature of mankind. — Theodore Parker

There is no intercessor, angel, mediator, between man and God; for man can speak and God hear, each for himself. He requires no advocates to plead for men. — Theodore Parker

Gratitude is a nice touch of beauty added last of all to the countenance. Giving a classic beauty, an angelic loveliness, to the character. — Theodore Parker

The coat of the buffalo never pinches under the arm, never puckers at the shoulders; it is always the same, yet never old fashioned nor out of date. — Theodore Parker

Love is the piety of the affections. — Theodore Parker

The miser, poor fool, not only starves his body, but also his own soul. — Theodore Parker

Great success is a great temptation. — Theodore Parker

Did the mass of men know the actual selfishness and injustice of their rulers, not a government would stand a year. - The world would foment with revolution. — Theodore Parker

All men need something to poetize and idealize their life a little-something which they value for more than its use, and which is a symbol of their emancipation from the mere materialism and drudgery of daily life. — Theodore Parker

Such a large sweet fruit is a complete marriage, that it needs a very long summer to ripen in and then a long winter to mellow and season it. — Theodore Parker

Intellect is stronger than cannon. — Theodore Parker

The miser, starving his brother's body, starves also his own soul, and at death shall creep out of his great estate of injustice, poor and naked and miserable. — Theodore Parker

Outward judgment often fails, inward judgment never. — Theodore Parker

The Roman Christian mythology (and theology) discourages the vice of licentiousness, and so this is better than the heathen, but it encourages bigotry, hypocrisy, cant, and many another vice which the older Mother of Abominations kept clear from. — Theodore Parker

What succeeds we keep, and it becomes the habit of mankind. — Theodore Parker

Silence is a figure of speech, unanswerable, short, cold, but terribly severe. — Theodore Parker

What a joy is there in a good book, writ by some great master of thought, who breaks into beauty as in summer the meadow into grass and dandelions and violets, with geraniums and manifold sweetness. — Theodore Parker

Greatness is its own torment. — Theodore Parker

Manly natural religion - it is not joining the Church; it is not to believe in a creed, Hebrew, Protestant, Catholic, Trinitarian, Unitarian, Nothingarian. It is not to keep Sunday idle; to attend meetings; to be wet with water; to read the Bible; to offer prayers in words; to take bread and wine in the meeting house; love a scape-goat Jesus, or any other theological clap-trap. — Theodore Parker

The great man is to be the servant of mankind, not they of him. — Theodore Parker

The union of men in large masses is indispensable to the development and rapid growth of the higher faculties of men. Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization whence light and heat radiated out into the dark cold world. — Theodore Parker

A happy wedlock is a long falling in love. — Theodore Parker

Applying good sense to religion and religion to life. This is the field in which I design to labor — Theodore Parker

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. — Theodore Parker

The Bible goes equally to the cottage of the peasant, and the palace of the king. - It is woven into literature, and colors the talk of the street. The bark of the merchant cannot sail without it; and no ship of war goes to the conflict but it is there. It enters men's closets; directs their conduct, and mingles in all the grief and cheerfulness of life. — Theodore Parker

It takes years to marry completely two hearts, even of the most loving and well-assorted. A happy wedlock is a long falling in love. Men and women marry fractionally, now a small and then a larger fraction ... Such a long and sweet fruit needs a long summer to ripen in and a long winter to season in. But real and happy marriage is one of those things so handsome that if the sun were, as the Greek poets fabled it, a god, he might stop the world and hold it still now and then to feast his eyes on such a spectacle. — Theodore Parker

Disappointment is often the salt of life. — Theodore Parker

Mankind never loses any good thing, physical, intellectual, or moral, till it finds a better, and then the loss is a gain. No steps backward is the rule of human history. What is gained by one man is invested in all men, and is a permanent investment for all time. — Theodore Parker

Let us do our duty in our shop or our kitchen, in the market, the street, the office, the school, the home, just as faithfully as if we stood in the front rank of some great battle, and knew that victory for mankind depended on our bravery, strength, and skill. When we do that, the humblest of us will be serving in that great army which achieves the welfare of the world. — Theodore Parker

And war-the worst form of evil! — Theodore Parker

The lottery of honest labor, drawn by time, is the only one whose prizes are worth taking up and carrying home. — Theodore Parker

There never was a great truth but it was reverenced; never a great institution, nor a great man, that did not, sooner or later, receive the reverence of mankind. — Theodore Parker

Let others laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty, if they will. You have time and eternity to rejoice in. — Theodore Parker

It is vain to trust in wrong; as much of evil, so much of loss, is the formula of human history. — Theodore Parker

No virtue fades out of mankind. Not over-hopeful by inborn temperament, cautious by long experience, I yet never despair of human virtue. — Theodore Parker

[America is] a rebellious nation. Our whole history is treason; our blood was attained before we were born; our creeds were infidelity to the mother church; our constitution treason to our fatherland. — Theodore Parker

Democracy means not "I am as good as you are" but "You are as good as I am.". — Theodore Parker

The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most. — Theodore Parker

It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus? None but a Jesus. — Theodore Parker

He prays best who, not asking God to do man's work, prays penitence, prays resolutions, and then prays deeds
thus supplicating with heart and head and hands. — Theodore Parker

The heresy of one age is the orthodox belief and "only infallible rule" of the nest. — Theodore Parker

Genius is the father of a heavenly line, but the mortal mother, that is industry. — Theodore Parker

Science is the natural ally of religion. — Theodore Parker

I believe in the admission of women to the full rights of citizenship and share in government, on the express grounds that few women keep house so badly or with such wastefulness as chancellors of the exchequer keep the state. — Theodore Parker

Temperance is corporeal piety; it is the preservation of divine order in the body. — Theodore Parker

The duty of labor is written on a man's body: in the stout muscle of the arm,, and the delicate machinery of the hand. — Theodore Parker

Pride is both a virtue and a vice. — Theodore Parker

If belief in the miraculous revelation of the Old Testament and the New is required to make a man religious, then Franklin had no religion at all. It would be an insult to say that he believed in the popular theology of his time, or of ours, for. I find not a line from his pen indicating any such belief. — Theodore Parker

Humanity is the Son of God. — Theodore Parker

Man is the jewel of God, who has created this material world to keep his treasure in. — Theodore Parker

Who escapes a duty, avoids a gain. — Theodore Parker

The earnestness of life is the only passport to satisfaction of life. — Theodore Parker

Remorse is the pain of sin. — Theodore Parker

Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark. — Theodore Parker

All men desire to be immortal. — Theodore Parker

Man never falls so low that he can see nothing higher than himself. — Theodore Parker

Nature is God's Old Testament. — Theodore Parker

Self-denial is indispensable to a strong character, and the highest kind comes from a religious stock. — Theodore Parker

The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. A great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
1810-1860, Minister — Theodore Parker

The great basis of the Christian faith is compassion; do not dismiss that from your hearts, neither will your Maker. — Theodore Parker

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. — Theodore Parker

The diamond which shines in the Saviour's crown shall burn in unquenched beauty at last on the forehead of every human soul. — Theodore Parker

I look through the grave into heaven. — Theodore Parker

It is not from the tall crowded workhouse of prosperity that men first or clearest see the eternal stars of heaven. — Theodore Parker

That which is called liberality is frequently nothing more than the vanity of giving. — Theodore Parker

Truth stood on one side and Ease on the other; it has often been so. — Theodore Parker

The use of great men is to serve the little men, to take care of the human race, and act as practical interpreters of justice and truth. — Theodore Parker

Love of truth will bless the lover all his days; yet when he brings her home, his fair-faced bride, she comes empty-handed to his door, herself her only dower. — Theodore Parker

What sad faces one always sees in the asylums for orphans! It is more fatal to neglect the heart than the head. — Theodore Parker

The most useful is the greatest. — Theodore Parker

Every rose is an autograph from the hand of the Almighty God on this world about us. He has inscribed His thoughts in these marvelous hieroglyphics which sense and science have been these many thousand years seeking to understand. — Theodore Parker

Yet, if he would, man cannot live all to this world. If not religious, he will be superstitious. IF he worship not the true God, he will have his idols. — Theodore Parker

Marriages are best made of dissimilar material. — Theodore Parker

As society advances the standard of poverty rises. — Theodore Parker

All the spaces between my mind and the mind of God are full of truths waiting to be crystallized into laws for the government of the masses. — Theodore Parker

The joy of heaven will begin as soon as we attain the character of heaven, and do its duties. — Theodore Parker

Wit has its place in debate; in controversy it is a legitimate weapon, offensive and defensive. — Theodore Parker

You may not, cannot, appropriate beauty. It is the wealth of the eye, and a cat may gaze upon a king. — Theodore Parker

Democracy is direct self-government over all the people, for all the people, by all the people. — Theodore Parker

Wealth and want equally harden the human heart. — Theodore Parker

A democracy,- that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake I will call it the idea of Freedom. — Theodore Parker

For a thousand years no king in Christendom has shown such greatness or given so high a type of manly virtue. — Theodore Parker

Humanity is the sin of God. — Theodore Parker

Man is the highest product of his own history. The discoverer finds nothing so grand or tall as himself, nothing so valuable to him. The greatest star is at the small end, of the telescope,
the star that is looking, not looked after nor looked at. — Theodore Parker

The whole sum and substance of human history may be reduced to this maxim: that when man departs from the divine means of reaching the divine end, he suffers harm and loss. — Theodore Parker

First there is the democratic idea: that all men are endowed by their creator with certain natural rights; that these rights are alienable only by the possessor thereof; that they are equal in men; that government is to organize these natural, unalienable and equal rights into institutions designed for the good of the governed, and therefore government is to be of all the people, by all the people, and for all the people. Here government is development, not exploitation. — Theodore Parker

Magnificent promises are always to be suspected. — Theodore Parker

Nature is man's religious book, with lessons for every day. — Theodore Parker

Politics is the science of urgencies. — Theodore Parker

Truth never yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the soul of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere and produce its hundredfold. — Theodore Parker

There is no college for the conscience. — Theodore Parker

It seems strange that a butterfly's wing should be woven up so thin and gauzy in the monstrous loom of nature, and be so delicately tipped with fire from such a gross hand, and rainbowed all over in such a storm of thunderous elements. The marvel is that such great forces do such nice work. — Theodore Parker

I am conscious of eternal life. — Theodore Parker

To obtain a knowledge of duty, a man is not sent away, outside of himself, to ancient documents; for the only rule of faith a practice, the Word, is very nigh him, even in his heart, and by this word he is to try all documents. — Theodore Parker

Science, also, is most largely indebted to these beauty-loving Greeks, for truth is one form of loveliness. — Theodore Parker

No man is so great as mankind. — Theodore Parker

In all the world there is nothing so remarkable as a great man, nothing so rare, nothing which so well repays study. — Theodore Parker

It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a single thing; his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business. — Theodore Parker

Want and wealth equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive away nature from the heart of man. — Theodore Parker

I ask no risen dust to teach me immortality; I am conscious of eternal life. — Theodore Parker