Theodore Parker Quotes - Page 4

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

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

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.

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

No man is so great as mankind.

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

All men desire to be immortal.

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

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

Nature is God's Old Testament.

Did not Jesus say, resist not evil — with evil? Is not war the worst form of that evil.

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.

The miraculous revelation of the Old Testament and the New, the miracles of famous men, Jews, Gentiles, or Christians, — then Franklin had no religion at all; and 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.

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

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

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

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.

Remorse is the pain of sin.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.