61 quotes
Here are two kinds of light, the light on the hither side of the darkness and the light beyond the darkness.
Life and Destiny (1913)
The Supreme Ethical Rule: Act So As To Elicit the Best In Others and Thereby In Thy Self.
Ethical religion affirms the continuity of progress toward moral perfection.
Life and Destiny (1913)
Deep down in every human heart is the seed of a diviner life, which only needs the quickening influence of right conditions to germinate.
Life and Destiny (1913)
The bitter, yet merciful, lesson which death teaches us is to distinguish the gold from the tinsel, the true values from the worthless chaff.
Life and Destiny (1913)
The moral improvement of the nations and their individual components has not kept pace with the march of intellect and the advance of industry.
Founding Address (1876)
When the light of the sun shines through a prism it is broken into beautiful colours, and when the prism is shattered, still the light remains.
Life and Destiny (1913)
By ceaseless efforts to live the good life we maintain our moral sanity. Not from without, but from within, flow the divine waters that renew the soul.
Life and Destiny (1913)
The symbols of religion are ciphers of which the key is to be found in moral experience. It is in vain we pore over the ciphers unless we possess the key.
Life and Destiny (1913)
The moral ideal would embrace the whole of life. In its sight nothing is petty or indifferent. It touches the veriest trifles and turns them into shining gold.
Life and Destiny (1913)
Theories of what is true have their day. They come and go, leave their deposit in the common stock of knowledge, and are supplanted by other more convincing theories.
The Religion of Duty (1905)
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.
Founding Address (1876)
The divine in man is our sole ground for believing that there is anything divine in the universe outside of man.
Life and Destiny (1913)
Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each include the other, each is enriched by the other.
Life and Destiny (1913)
It is not possible to enter into the nature of the Good by standing aloof from it — by merely speculating upon it.
Life and Destiny (1913)
There is a universal element in man which he can assert by so acting as if the purpose of the Universe were also his purpose.
Life and Destiny (1913)
It is written that the last enemy to be vanquished is death. We should begin early in life to vanquish this enemy by obliterating every trace of the fear of death from our minds.
Life and Destiny (1913)
Somehow the secret of the universe is hidden in our breast. Somehow the destinies of the universe depend upon our exertions.
Life and Destiny (1913)
What I state as certain is certain for me. It has approved itself as such in my experience. Let others consult their experience, and see how far it tallies with that which is here set forth.
Vile deeds are vile, no matter whether we know or do not know what, after death, will be the fate of the doer.
Life and Destiny (1913)