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
Interpretation
Being greedy harms not just others, but oneself as well.
This quote by Theodore Parker reflects on the destructive nature of greed and selfishness. It suggests that a miser, by withholding resources and compassion from others, ultimately impoverishes his own spirit and well-being. In the end, their material wealth cannot compensate for the moral and emotional emptiness they create through their actions.
In practice
In a discussion about charity and compassion during a community meeting.
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.
Want and wealth equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive away nature from the heart of man.
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, β it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth, with beauty too.
No man is so great as mankind.
Outward judgment often fails, inward judgment never.
You may not, cannot, appropriate beauty. It is the wealth of the eye, and a cat may gaze upon a king.
We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under . . . The fourth category, the rarest, is the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.
We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other ... except through faith.
While money is used to finance speech, money is not speech.
I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence.
God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it.
It is precisely womenβs experience of God that this world lacks. A world that does not nurture its weakest, does not know God the birthing mother. A world that does not preserve the planet, does not know God the creator. A world that does not honor the spirit of compassion, does not know God the spirit. God the lawgiver, God the judge, God the omnipotent being have consumed Western spirituality and, in the end, shriveled its heart.
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