Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.
[His research into biblical criticism had lead him to the conclusion that most of what was contained in traditional religion simply wasn't true] Was I to lie in order to teach the truth? ...Was I to repeat these words? It was impossible. It was certain they would stick in my throat. On these grounds the separation was decided by me.
The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others. I am myself spiritually dead unless I reach out to the fine quality dormant in others. For it is only with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other, that the god hidden in me, will consent to appear.
The past speaks to us in a thousand voices, warning and comforting, animating and stirring to action.
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.
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.
The exercises of our meeting are to be simple and devoid of all ceremonial and formalism.
Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.
The Ethical Society, therefore, is like a Church in maintaining, and emphasizing the importance of maintaining the custom of public assemblies on Sunday.
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.
For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith.
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.
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.
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.
Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience.
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.
No religion can long continue to maintain its purity when the church becomes the subservient vassal of the state.
The office of the public teacher is an unenviable and thankless one.
