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Who escapes a duty, avoids a gain.

Theodore Parker

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Theodore Parker
Age: 49 †
Born: 1810
Born: August 24
Died: 1860
Died: May 10
Theologian
Lexington
Massachusetts
Avoids
Escapes
Gain
Gains
Duty

More quotes by Theodore Parker

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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.
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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.
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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.
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Religion without joy-it is no religion.
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Applying good sense to religion and religion to life. This is the field in which I design to labor
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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
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That which is called liberality is frequently nothing more than the vanity of giving.
Theodore Parker
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What succeeds we keep, and it becomes the habit of mankind.
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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.
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Every man has at times in his mind the Ideal of what he should be, but is not. This ideal may be high and complete, or it may be quite low and insufficient yet in all men, that really seek to improve, it is better than the actual character... Man never falls so low, that he can see nothing higher than himself.
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The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading every man that tries it finds it so. But a great book that comes from a great thinker, — it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth, with beauty too.
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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
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Science, also, is most largely indebted to these beauty-loving Greeks, for truth is one form of loveliness.
Theodore Parker
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Pride is both a virtue and a vice.
Theodore Parker
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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
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The great man is to be the servant of mankind, not they of him.
Theodore Parker
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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
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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
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Democracy is direct self-government over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.
Theodore Parker
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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