Theodore Parker Quotes
A reforming American minister of the Unitarian church, an abolitionist, and a Transcendentalist.
(1810 - 1860)
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A life merely of pleasure, or chiefly of pleasure, is always a poor and worthless life, not worth the living; always unsatisfactory in its course, always miserable in its end.
[Pleasure]
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A nation's welfare depends on its ability to master the world; that on its power of work; and that on its power of thought.
[Work]
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As society advances the standard of poverty rises.
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Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark.
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Covetous men need money least, yet most affect and seek it; prodigals who need it most, do least regard it.
[Money]
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Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.
[Government]
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Democracy means not "I am as good as you are," but "You are as good as I am."
[Democracy]
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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.
[Injustice]
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Every man has, at times, in his mind the ideal of what he should be, but is not. In all men that seek to improve, it is better than the actual character. - No one is so satisfied with himself that he never wishes to be wiser, better, and more holy.
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Every rose is an autograph from the hand of God on his world about us. - He has inscribed his thoughts in these marvellous hieroglyphics which sense and science have, these many thousand years, been seeking to understand.
[Flowers]
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I recommend no sour ascetic life. I believe not only in the thorns on the rosebush, but in the roses which the thorns defend. Asceticism is the child of sensuality and superstition. She is the secret mother of many a secret sin. God, when he made man's body, did not give us a fibre too much, nor a passion too many.
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It is not from the tall, crowded work house of prosperity that men first or clearest see the eternal stars of heaven.
[Affliction]
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It is vain to trust in wrong; as much of evil, so much of loss, is the formula of human history.
[Wrong]
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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.
[Man]
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Justice is the idea of God; the ideal of men; the rule of conduct writ in the nature of mankind.
[Justice]
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Let others laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty, if they will. You have time and eternity to rejoice in.
[Duty]
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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.
[Duty]
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Let your pleasures be taken as Daniel took his prayer, with his windows open-pleasures which need not cause a single blush on an ingenuous cheek.
[Pleasure]
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Magnificent promises are always to be suspected.
[Promise]
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