Joseph Fort Newton Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

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

Joseph Fort Newton
It 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
Every man has a train of thought on which he rides when he is alone.

Joseph Fort Newton
The 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 Newton
London is like a dream come true. As I ramble through it I am haunted by the curious feeling of something half-forgotten, but still dimly remembered, like a reminiscence of some previous state of existence. It is at once familiar and strange.

Joseph Fort Newton
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.

Joseph Fort Newton
Masonry was not made to divide men, but to unite them, leaving each man free to think his own thoughts and fashion his own system of ultimate truth. All its emphasis rests upon two extremely simple and profound principles, love of God and love of man.

Joseph Fort Newton
Masonry is too great an institution to have been made in a day, much less by a few men, but was a slow evolution through long time, unfolding its beauty as it grew. Indeed, it was like one of its own cathedrals which one generation of builders wrought and vanished, and another followed, until, amidst vicissitudes of time and change, of decline and revival, the order itself became a temple of Freedom and Fraternity.

Joseph Fort Newton
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.

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

Joseph Fort Newton
Whether there were organized orders of builders in the early times no one can tell, through there may have been. No matter; man mixed thought and worship with his work, and as he cut his altar stones and fitted them together he thought out a faith by which to live.

Joseph Fort Newton