Where none work but slaves, usefulness becomes degradation.
Lydia Maria Child, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1836) p.30 (Unitarian, author, reformer)
Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. When the people once surrender their share in the legislature, and their right of defending the limitations upon the Government, of resisting every encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.
John Adams (Unitarian, lawyer, statesman, US President 1797-1801, reformer) to Abigail Adams (Unitarian, farmer, patriot), Philadelphia, 7 July 1775, Familiar Letters of John Adams And His Wife Abigail Adams, During the Revolution, edited by Charles Francis Adams (1876) p.190
The substance of power is that which sways the minds and hearts of the people; all else is the show of it.
Thomas Starr King, Substance and Show (1890) p.26 (Universalist, Unitarian, clergy, reformer)
Some flowers give out little or no odor, until crushed.
Abigail Alcott (Unitarian, reformer, suffragist) quoted by Eve LaPlante, My Heart Is Boundless p.xiii
Perfection is not reached by a sudden leap; nor hopeless wickedness by a sudden fall
Marion D. Shutter, Justice and Mercy (1894) p.30 (Universalist, clergy, theologian)
The poor steamer foundered because it drifted…the man who has no aim higher than himself also drifts…Do not drift, but steer.
James Freeman Clarke, Everyday Religion (1886) p.6 (Unitarian, clergy, reformer)
Goodness, it seems to me, is always tolerant of the beliefs and nonbeliefs of others. We may convert, if we do at all, by being something irresistible, not by demanding something impossible.
May Sarton, The House By The Sea p.57-58 (Unitarian Universalist, essayist, poet, critic)
If we could read the secret history of those we would like to punish, we would find in each life a sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all our hostility.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Unitarian, poet)
Conscience…prepares the mind to act and to suffer beyond almost all other causes
Daniel Webster, “First Settlement of New England, Delivered 22 December 1820” (Unitarian, statesman, U.S. Senator)
We cannot be tactful with those whose point of view we fail to understand, or do not even strive to understand
Mary Ellen Richmond, Friendly Visiting Among the Poor (1906) p.14 (Unitarian, social worker, author, a developer of social work and research)
