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

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.

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

Simplicity should not be identified with bareness.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We measure our enjoyments by the sum expended.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.