Love is the spirit of life, and makes all things live.
James Freeman Clarke, Everyday Religion (1866) p.44 (Unitarian, reformer, minister)
A new world spins into being
not because an old one withers
and creaks to a stop
but because a heart shifts beat.
The difference matters.
Rudolph W. Nemser, “New Year’s”Moments of a Springtime(1967) UUA. (Unitarian Universalist, minister)
All we wish is to feel that we have not lived in vain. To serve is always our destiny and our delight: the mode of serving can sometimes choose.
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Theory of Teaching (1830) p. 2 (Unitarian, educator, author)
While shallow, babbling brooks, elate
Still of their worthless pebbles prate;
The deeper waters silent flow
Above the treasures hid below
Frances Sargent Osgood, “A Comparison Between A Talkative Fool And A Silent Philosopher” (Unitarian, poet, author)
They tell you the poet is useless and empty the sound of his lyre
That science has made him a phantom, and thinned to a shadow his fire:
Yet reformer has never demolished a dungeon or den of the foe
But the flame of the soul of a poet pulsated in every blow.
Bernard O’Dowd, “The Poet” (Rationalist, Free Religious Fellowship, Theosophist, activist, anarchist, poet, educator, journalist)
Nobody means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
Henry Brooks Adams (Unitarian, author)
When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you meant.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (Unitarian, author, editor)
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
and things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art; to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Unitarian, poet)
Everyone is a theologian, either conscious or unconscious, in the sense that everyone has some conception of the nature of reality, of the demands of reality, and of those elements in reality that support or threaten meaningful existence.
James Luther Adams (Unitarian Universalist, minister)
Our life is what we make it. An insignificant game or a noble trial; a dream or a reality; a play of the senses worn out in selfish use, and flying “swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” or an ascension of the soul, by daily duties and unfaltering faith, to more spiritual relations and to loftier toils
E. H. Chapin (Universalist, minister)
