Society

"A gentleman born, master parson; who writes himself 'Armigero;' in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, 'Armigero.'"

"I freely told you, all the wealth I had Ran in my veins, I was a gentleman."

"My master hath been an honourable gentleman; tricks he hath had in him, which gentlemen have."

"It is much easier to be a hero than a gentleman. You can be a hero from time to time, but a gentleman is something you have to be all the time. Which isn't easy."

"It is the final test of a gentleman—his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him."

"And sigh that one thing only has been lent To youth and age in common,—discontent."

"And from the discontent of man The world's best progress springs."

"The thirst to know and understand, A large and liberal discontent; These are the goods in life's rich hand, The things that are more excellent."

"We love in others what we lack ourselves, and would be everything but what we are."

"To sigh, yet feel no pain, To weep, yet scarce know why; To sport an hour with Beauty's chain, Then throw it idly by."

"Æstuat infelix angusto limite mundi."

"Qui fit, Mæcenas, ut nemo quam sibi sortem, Seu ratio dederit, seu fors objecerit, illa Contentus vivat? laudet diversa sequentes."

"The best things beyond their measure cloy."

"Poor in abundance, famish'd at a feast."

"Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation."

"I was born to other things."

"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least."

"I know a discontented gentleman, Whose humble means match not his haughty mind."

"I see your brows are full of discontent, Your hearts of sorrow and your eyes of tears."

"Past and to come seem best; things present worst."

"ὁ μισῶν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ τούτῳ εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον φυλάξει αὐτήν."

"How is it Maecenas, that no one lives contented with his lot, whether he has planned it for himself or fate has flung him into it, but yet he praises those who follow different paths?"

"Whoe'er was edified, themselves were not."

"In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed, and the boldest staggered."

"The reason for age-of-consent laws — about anything — is that society recognizes there are entire categories of activities to which children and minors are incapable of giving consent. They aren’t mature enough to understand the implications or consequences of a decision, and we have traditionally codified that reality in law. That’s why parents routinely make decisions on their children’s behalf. It’s also one of the reasons children can’t get tattoos or buy alcohol, among many other things. This isn’t hard to understand, and indeed there’s a broad societal consensus around the basic claim that children can’t consent to certain things or make certain decisions on their own behalf."

"Until very recently, no California court or commentator had suggested that the purpose of California's statutory rape law was to protect young women from the risk of pregnancy. Indeed, the...the law was initially enacted on the premise that young women, in contrast to young men, were to be deemed legally incapable of consenting to an act of sexual intercourse. Because their chastity was considered particularly precious, those young women were felt to be uniquely in need of the State's protection. In contrast, young men were assumed to be capable of making such decisions for themselves; the law therefore did not offer them any special protection."

"Let us consider a concept which has become extremely overburdened. Amidst daily life people assimilate with difficulty an understanding of cooperation, yet much more difficult and inaccessible to them is the concept of Brotherhood. Bodily heritage, that is, blood relationship, impedes the acceptance of the concept of Brotherhood. It is simpler for people to disclaim altogether any understanding of World Brotherhood. They would rather call it a utopia than reflect about the possibility of applying it in life. If even in the narrow domain of domestic life people do not find within themselves the affirmation of brotherhood, then in the wider sense it may seem to them to be impractical. Besides, people read carelessly the ancient Covenants, which speak about great numbers of Brothers and Sisters. Likewise, people’s recollections of the Subtle World have become clouded. Only there is it possible to encounter the expanded realization of Brotherhood. The body impedes the way to many broad ideas. Only by going beyond the limits of the bodily understanding is it possible to recognize brotherly cooperation. Let us gather the signs of such an expanded state of consciousness. (1)"

"Jesus throws down the dividing prejudices of nationality, and teaches universal love without distinction of race, merit, or rank. A man's neighbor, henceforth, was every one who needed help, even an enemy. All men, from the slave to the highest, were sons of one Father in heaven, and should feel and act toward each other, as brethren. No human standard of virtue would suffice; no imitations of the loftiest examples among men. Moral perfection had been recognized alike by heathen and Jews, as found only in likeness to the Divine, and that Jesus proclaims as, henceforth, the one ideal for all humanity. With a sublime enthusiasm and brotherly love for the race, He rises above His age, and announces a common Father of all mankind, and one grand spiritual ideal in resemblance to Him."

"I stand by my kind; and I thank God for the temptations that have brought me into sympathy with them, as I do for the "love that urges me to efforts for their good. I hail the great brotherhood of trial and temptation in the name of humanity, and give them assurance that from the Divine Man, and some, at least, of His disciples, there goes out to them a flood of sympathy that would fain sweep them up to the firm footing of the rock of safety."

"Kings and their subjects, masters and slaves, find a common level in two places — at the foot of the cross, and in the grave."

"God has taught in the Scriptures the lesson of a universal brotherhood, and man must not gainsay the teaching. Shivering in the ice-bound or scorching in the tropical regions; in the lap of luxury or in the wild hardihood of the primeval forest; belting the globe in a tired search for rest, or quieting through life in the heart of ancestral woods; gathering all the decencies around him like a garment, or battling in fierce raid of crime against a world which has disowned him, there is an inner humanness which binds me to that man by a primitive and indissoluble bond. He is my brother, and I cannot dissever the relationship. He is my brother, and I cannot release myself from the obligation to do him good."

"My friends, let us try to follow the Saviour's steps; let us remember all day long what it is to be men; that it is to have everv one whom we meet for our brother in the sight of God; that it is this, never to meet any one, however bad he may be, for whom we cannot say. "Christ died for that man, and Christ cares for him still. He is precious in God's eyes, and he shall be precious in mine also.""

"Enough of good there is in the lowest estate to sweeten life; enough of evil in the highest to check presumption; enough there is of both in all estates, to bind us in compassionate brotherhood, to teach us impressively that we are of one dying and one immortal family."

"The fact is that the truth of harmony and human brotherhood derives not from an absorbed trance but from an awakened prajñâ or wisdom; and its validity depends not on any dramatic ecstatic visions but it belongs to man’s (…) natural reason unspoilt by theologies of exclusiveness."

"Thy sweet magic brings together What stern Custom spreads afar; All men become brothers Where thy happy wing-beats are."

"Without promoting fraternity, our democracy cannot survive. And the dangerous demonisation of minorities has to be countered, as it is this hate which gets transformed into intense violence."

"There is a destiny that makes us brothers: None goes his way alone: All that we send into the lives of others Comes back onto our own."

"Come, clear the way, then, clear the way: Blind creeds and kings have had their day. Break the dead branches from the path; Our hope is in the aftermath — Our hope is in heroic men, Star-led to build the world again. To this Event the ages ran: Make way for Brotherhood — make way for Man."

"The crest and crowning of all good, Life's final star, is Brotherhood; For it will bring again to Earth Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth; Will send new light on every face, A kingly power upon the race. And till it come, we men are slaves, And travel downward to the dust of graves."

"Our own Theosophical Society... is striving... to dispel ignorance, to put before men the truth about life and death, to show them why they are here and what lessons they have to learn and so to bring them to understand and to realize the great truth of the brotherhood of man."

"Speak not too well of one who scarce will know Himself transfigured in its roseate glow; Say kindly of him what is, chiefly, true, Remembering always he belongs to you; Deal with him as a truant, if you will, But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!"

"In his latest encyclical Fratelli tutti published Oct. 3, Pope Francis expressed apertis verbis in an absolutely unprecedented key an idea of universal brotherhood, as a bond that unites all human beings beyond their faith, ideology, skin color, social background, language, culture and nation. It is a thought that is close to the ideals that have been the very foundation of Freemasonry since its origins. For more than 300 years the principle of brotherhood has been written indelibly in the Masonic trinomial placed in the East in the temples along with those of liberty and equality. And,the realization of a universal brotherhood, is from its origins the great mission and dream of Freemasonry."

"For he to-day that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother."

"The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth preserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, so long as it was the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it, that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and disaster."

"It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood."

"Some people talk little about Brotherhood but do much for it. And there are others who always have Brotherhood on their tongues and are never far from treachery. (16)"

"That which is most sacred surrounds the concept of Brotherhood. That which is most joyful lives in the consciousness that there exists cooperation of Knowledge."

"Our government should not be run like a business; it should be run like a family. A business might rightfully put its short-term profits first, but a functional family puts the well-being of its children first. That's not a relative truth; it's a moral absolute... Our system was designed before women had a voice in the public realm, and raising children was deemed to just be "women's work." But we certainly have a voice now, and we need to raise it on behalf of every mother's child.... In any advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives, a common characteristic is the fierce behavior of the adult female of the species when she senses a threat to her cubs. Ours are threatened now, and we need to get fierce."

"In te omnis domus inclinata recumbit."

"Genus immortale manet, multosque per annos Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum."