How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.
Charles Darwin (Unitarian, naturalist, author Origin of Species)
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, —
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
James Russell Lowell, “The Present Crisis” (Unitarian, poet, reformer, statesman)
The future wakes thy dreamings high,
And thou a note mayest claim
Aspiring, which in after times
Shall swell the trump of fate.
Caroline Howard Gilman, “The American Boy” (Unitarian, author)
Blame not the age, nor think it full
Of evil and unrest;
But say of every other age,
“This one shall be the best.”
The age to brighten every path
By sin and sorrow trod;
For loving hearts to usher in
The commonwealth of God
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, “The Present Age” Poems (1895) p. 9 (Unitarian, suffragist, abolitionist, educator, author)
Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. Things refuse to be mismanaged long.
Theodore Parker (Unitarian, Transcendentalist, minister, social reformer)
