We measure our enjoyments by the sum expended.

Simplicity should not be identified with bareness.

[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...

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...

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

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

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 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...

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.

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

Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

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

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...

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...