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.
Joseph Fort NewtonEach lodge is an oasis if equality and good will in a desert of strife, working to wield mankind into a great league of sympathy and services, which, by the terms of our definition, it seeks to exhibit now on a small scale.
Joseph Fort NewtonThe discovery of the Square was a great event to the primitive mystics of the Nile. Very early it became an emblem of truth, justice, and righteousness, and it remains to this day through unaccountable ages have passed.
Joseph Fort NewtonInstead 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.
Joseph Fort NewtonGod works for man through man and seldom, if at all, in any other way. He asks for our voices to speak His truth, for our hands to do His work here below, sweet voices and clean hands to make liberty and love prevail over injustice and hate.
Joseph Fort NewtonIt is not strange that men of note and learning, attracted by the wealth of symbolism on Masonry, as well as by its spirit of fraternity perhaps, also by its secrecy began at an early date to ask to be accepted as members of the order; hence Accepted Masons. How far back the custom of admitting such men to the Lodge goes is not clear, but hints of it are discernable in the oldest documents of the order.
Joseph Fort Newton