Theodore Parker Quotes

Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause.

The superior man has a dignified ease without pride. The mean man has pride without a dignified ease.

The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough.

What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets ? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.

Pride is handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride.

He, who practices right, but in the hope of acquiring great renown, is very near to vice.

Worthy of honor is he who does no injustice, and more than twofold honor, if he not only does no injustice himself, but hinders others from doing any.

Is not virtue a negation of becoming?

I have seen men incapable of the sciences, but never any incapable of virtue.

We assume therefore that moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.

Pride is the king of vices...it is the first of the pallbearers of the soul...other vices destroy only their opposite virtues, as wantonness destroys chastity; greed destroys temperance; anger destroys gentleness; but pride destroys all virtues.

These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions ... The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life.

The existence of virtue depends entirely upon its use.

It is wonderful, for almost all his actions may be traced to pride;-and pride has often been his best friend.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

But virtue too, as well as vice, is clad in flesh and blood.

Though pride is not a virtue, it is the parent of many virtues.

Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not.

The absence of vices adds so little to the sum of one's virtues.

Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself

Virtue makes us aim at the right end, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means.

Pride eradicates all vices but itself.

Virtue is health, vice is sickness.

Where virtue is, sensibility is the ornament and becoming attire of virtue. On certain occasions it may almost be said to become virtue. But sensibility and all the amiable qualities may likewise become, and too often have become, the panders of vice and the instruments of seduction.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.