Theodore Parker Quotes

I look through the grave into heaven.

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.

Intellect is stronger than cannon.

Wealth and want equally harden the human heart...

Who escapes a duty, avoids a gain.

Magnificent promises are always to be suspected.

Outward judgment often fails, inward judgment never.

Remorse is the pain of sin.

Greatness is its own torment.

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

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

As society advances the standard of poverty rises.

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

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

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.

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.

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

[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.

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

I am conscious of eternal life.

The most useful is the greatest.

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.

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.

Humanity is the sin of God

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

There is no college for the conscience.

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

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

Nature is God's Old Testament.

Be not familiar with the idea of wrong, for sin in fancy mothers many an ugly fact.

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.

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.

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

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.

Disappointment is often the salt of life.

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

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

A happy wedlock is a long falling in love.