Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of falsehood and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacherous, and deceitful through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. Under a Democracy they are so as a means of attaining popularity and office, and because of the greed for wealth.

The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.

Before God manifested Himself, when all things were still hidden in Him... He began by forming an imperceptible point; that was His own thought. With this thought He then began to construct a mysterious and holy form... the Universe.

There are great truths at the foundation of Freemasonry, truths which it is its mission to teach and which is constituting the very essence of, that sublime system which gives the venerable institution its peculiar identity as a science of morality, and it behooves every disciple diligently to ponder and inwardly digest.

The sources of our knowledge of the kabalistic doctrines are the books of Yetzirah and Zohar, the former drawn up in the second century, and the latter a little later; but they contain materials much older than themselves...In them, as in the teachings of Zoroaster, everything that exists emanates from a source of infinite Light.

We do not see and estimate the relative importance of objects so easily and clearly from the level or the waving land as from the elevation of a lone peak, towering above the plain; for each looks through his own mist.

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.