Theodore Parker Quotes

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

— 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

“Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect.”

— Theodore Parker

“Remorse is the pain of sin.”

— 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

“Politics is the science of urgencies.”

— Theodore Parker

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

— 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

“Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark.”

— Theodore Parker

“Magnificent promises are always to be suspected.”

— Theodore Parker

“Democracy means not "I am as good as you are" but "You are as good as I am.".”

— Theodore Parker

“Who escapes a duty, avoids a gain.”

— 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

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

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

— 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

“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

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

— Theodore Parker

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

— Theodore Parker

“That which is called liberality is frequently nothing more than the vanity of giving.”

— 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

“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 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 ask no risen dust to teach me immortality; I am conscious of eternal life.”

— 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

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

“Man never falls so low that he can see nothing higher than himself.”

— Theodore Parker

“Nature is God's Old Testament.”

— 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

“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

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

— Theodore Parker

“The great man is to be the servant of mankind, not they of him.”

— 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

“Justice is the idea of God, the ideal of man, the rule of conduct writ in the nature of mankind.”

— 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

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

— Theodore Parker

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

— Theodore Parker

“Greatness is its own torment.”

— Theodore Parker

“Humanity is the Son of God.”

— Theodore Parker

Science is the natural ally of religion.

— Theodore Parker

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

— Theodore Parker

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

— 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

“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

“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

“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

“I look through the grave into heaven.”

— Theodore Parker

“The earnestness of life is the only passport to satisfaction of life.”

— 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

“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