If you desire information on some point of law, you are not likely to ponder over the ponderous tomes of legal writers in order to obtain the knowledge you seek, by your own unaided efforts.

The exercises of our meeting are to be simple and devoid of all ceremonial and formalism.

Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each include the other, each is enriched by the other.

If you desire information on some point of law, you are not likely to ponder over the ponderous tomes of legal writers in order to obtain the knowledge you seek, by your own unaided efforts.

Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience.

You do not build your own houses, nor make your own garments, nor bake your own bread, simply because you know that if you were to attempt all these things they would all be more or less ill done.

Few are there that will leave the secure seclusion of the scholar's life, the peaceful walks of literature and learning, to stand out a target for the criticism of unkind and hostile minds.

Simplicity should not be identified with bareness.

Admitting the force of these contentions, nevertheless, the custom of meeting together in public assembly for the consideration of the most serious, the most exalted topics of human interest is too vitally precious to be lost.

The freedom of thought is a sacred right of every individual man, and diversity will continue to increase with the progress, refinement, and differentiation of the human intellect.

An anxious unrest, a fierce craving desire for gain has taken possession of the commercial world, and in instances no longer rare the most precious and permanent goods of human life have been madly sacrificed in the interests of momentary enrichment.

The office of the public teacher is an unenviable and thankless one.

Love of country is like love of woman - he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good.

In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown.

Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.

The platform of an Ethical Society is itself the altar; the address must be the fire that burns thereon.

The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by.

The Ethical Society, therefore, is like a Church in maintaining, and emphasizing the importance of maintaining the custom of public assemblies on Sunday.

The past speaks to us in a thousand voices, warning and comforting, animating and stirring to action.

No one can fail to see that the power of the Church among large numbers in many communities is today diminishing, or has already ceased.

We measure our enjoyments by the sum expended.

Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.

FOR a long time the conviction has been dimly felt in the community that, without prejudice to existing institutions, the legal day of weekly rest might be employed to advantage for purposes affecting the general good.

Perhaps a hundred people assembled one evening, May 15, 1876, at the time when the country was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its political independence.

The ethical manifold, conceived of as unified, furnishes, or rather is, the ideal of the whole.

No religion can long continue to maintain its purity when the church becomes the subservient vassal of the state.

The family is the school of duties - founded on love.

For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith.

A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered.

People may be said to resemble not the bricks of which a house is build but the pieces of a picture puzzle each differing in shape but matching the rest and thus bringing out the picture.

Dogma is the convictions of one man imposed authoritatively upon others.

Every dogma every philosophic or theological creed was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience.

To care for anyone else enough to make their problems ones own is ever the beginning of ones real ethical development.

The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by.

The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.

I want the municipality to be a helping hand to the man with a desire of sympathy, to help the fallen when it is not in their power to help themselves.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

We have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way by which faith can be acquired.

But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people.

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.

It was also during my tenure of office that the Japanese Government agreed to the conclusion of a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and signed it, pursuing a policy in harmony with the avowed desire of the people.

'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.

One of the things that has always motivated me to write is the desire to get it out and look at it in an objective way, so that it doesn't cause me any serious pain by staying inside.

In human history, the desire for revenge and the desire for loot have often been closely associated.

I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.

I don't know what keeps me going. Sometimes I wonder... I think it's just pure perseverance and wanting to succeed and having that burning desire to always have success.

If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.