Joseph Fort Newton Quotes:

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.

Topics: May, Strange, Emotion, Medley, Life Attitude

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

Topics: Heart, Fire, Mind

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

Topics: Love, Simple, Way, Love Is Lost

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.

Topics: Believe, Negative

An egotist is not a man who thinks too much of himself; he is a man who thinks too little of other people.

Topics: Men, Thinking, People

Each 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.

Topics: Oasis, League, Desert, Lodges

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

source: - Joseph Fort Newton (1937). “Living Every Day: A Book of Faith, Philosophy, and Fun,”

Topics: Accountability, Debt, Lasts

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.

source: - Joseph Fort Newton (1922). “Preaching in London: A Diary of Anglo-American Friendship”

Topics: Confusion, House, Design, Patchwork

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.

source: - Joseph Fort Newton (1922). “Preaching in London: A Diary of Anglo-American Friendship”

Topics: Dream, Feelings, Half

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

Topics: Use, Mars, Bless, Human Happiness

To be happy is easy enough if we give ourselves, forgive others, and live with thanksgiving, No self centered person, no ungrateful soul can ever be happy, much less make anyone else happy. Life is giving, not getting.

Topics: Happy Life, Self, Giving, Appreciate Life

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

source: - Joseph Fort Newton (2013). “The Builders - A Story & Study of Masonry”, p.211, Lulu Press, Inc

Topics: Earth, Masonic, Tradition, Masonry, Divine Life

Every person has a train of thought on which they travel when they are alone. The dignity and nobility of their life, as well as their happiness depend upon the direction in which that train is going, the baggage it carries and the scenery through which it travels.

Topics: Baggage, Dignity, Scenery, Train Of Thought

Masonry superadds to our other obligations the strongest ties of connection between it and the cultivation of virtue, and furnishes the most powerful incentives to goodness.

Topics: Powerful, Ties, Connections, Masonry, Masons

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.

source: - Joseph Fort Newton (2013). “The Builders - A Story & Study of Masonry”, p.124, Lulu Press, Inc

Topics: Men, Order, Long, Builder, Masonry

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.

source: - Joseph Fort Newton (2013). “The Builders - A Story & Study of Masonry”, p.219, Lulu Press, Inc

Topics: Fashion, Simple, Men, Masonry, God And Love

Be the kind of person you would like to be with. Some people come into our lives, make footprints on our hearts and we are never the same. People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.

Topics: Relationship, Lonely, Wall

Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.

Topics: Life, Wall, Inspiration, Bodies In Motion, Friendliness

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.

source: - Joseph Fort Newton (2013). “The Builders - A Story & Study of Masonry”, p.258, Lulu Press, Inc

Topics: Sweet, Hate, Men, Sweet Voice, Clean Hands

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

source: - Joseph Fort Newton (2013). “The Builders - A Story & Study of Masonry”, p.257, Lulu Press, Inc

Topics: Men, Train Of Thought, Train

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.

Topics: Squares, Discovery, Justice, Great Events, Nile

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.

source: - Joseph Fort Newton (2013). “The Builders - A Story & Study of Masonry”, p.237, Lulu Press, Inc

Topics: Real, Soul, Quality

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.

source: - Joseph Fort Newton (2013). “The Builders - A Story & Study of Masonry”, p.138, Lulu Press, Inc

Topics: Men, Order, Symbolism

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.

Topics: Men, Liberty, Atoms

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.

source: - Joseph Fort Newton (2013). “The Builders - A Story & Study of Masonry”, p.24, Lulu Press, Inc

Topics: Cutting, Men, Order