Quotes from Joseph Fort Newton

More than an institution, more than a tradition, more than a society, Masonry is one of the forms of Divine life upon earth.

So many of us know what we are against, but not what we are for-what we disbelieve, not what we believe. A negative life easily becomes neutral and futile.

The real question, after all, is not the quantity of life, but its quality, its depth, its purity, its fortitude, its fineness of spirit and gesture of soul.

Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.

Love is lost in immensities; it comes in simple, gentle ways.

Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.

We can not tell what may happen to you in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens to us, how we take it, what we do with it and that is what really counts in the end.

A duty dodged is like a debt unpaid; it is only deferred, and we must come back and settle the account at last.

Why did they continue to enter Lodges until they had the rule of them? There must have been something more in their association, for they had their clubs, societies, and learned fellowships.

There came a day when the Masons, laying aside their stones, became workmen of another kind, not less builders than before, but using truths for tools and dramas for designs, uplifting such a temple as Watts dreamed of decorating with his visions of the august allegory of the evolution of man.

Upon that basis the first Grand Lodge was founded, and upon that basis Masonry rests today-holding that a unity of spirit is better than a uniformity of opinion, and that beyond the great and simple "religion in which all men agree" no dogma is worth a breach of charity

the heavens.[33] If further proof were needed,

Belief is truth held in the mind; faith is a fire in the heart.

Not what we have, but what we use, not what we see, but what we choose-these are the things that mar or bless human happiness.

Every man has a train of thought on which he rides when he is alone.

Instead of criticizing Masonry, let us than God for one alter where no man is asked to surrender his liberty of thought and become an indistinguishable atom on a mass of sectarian agglomeration.

London, with its monotonous and melancholy houses, seems like an inharmonious patchwork, as if pieced together without design. Yet it is lovable in its sprawling confusion.

We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us - how we can take it, what we do with it - and that is what really counts in the end.