Somewhere the free spirit must take its stand and claim its God-given distinction. If life is to be at all worth while there must be some boundary within which the soul holds its own august and ultimate tribunal.

Cyrus Guernsey Pringle, The Record of a Quaker Conscience

Consider also:

  1. “But, in the advanced degree of M.M. the answer is that he comes ‘From the East,’ for by this time the Mason is supposed to have so enlarged his knowledge as to realize that the primal source of life is not in the ‘West,’ not in this world; that existence upon this planet is but a transitory sojourn, spent in search of ‘the genuine secrets,’ the ultimate realities, of life; and that as the spirit of man must return to God who gave it, so he is now returning from this temporary world of ‘substituted secrets’ to the ‘East’ from which he originally came.”
  2. “He says further: ‘And when the soul has received Him as her leader the Daimon immediately presides over the soul, gives completion to its lives, and binds it to body when it descends. He likewise governs the common animal of the soul (the SAHU) and directs its peculiar life, and imparts to us the principles of all out thought and reasonings.”
  3. “Books on true occultism are on the whole very useless things; because those who are in possession of occult knowledge will not require them; while those who have no such knowledge will not understand them; neither will they receive much benefit from such literature; because real spiritual knowledge must be found within one’s own soul; it cannot be learned from books. The scientist, rationalist, and speculative philosopher deals only with, so to say, the candlesticks bearing the candles from which is emanating the light which they cannot see, neither can they see the candle; for the latter is representing the soul, whose light is the spirit.”
  4. “Archimedes lost his life through being intent upon a geometrical problem when he ought to have been reading the newspapers so as to see the proclamation that his life was to be spared. His business was really to identify himself, and claim the protection of the conquerors.”
  5. “No, no, the energy of life may be Kept on beyond the grave, but not begun, And he who flagged not in the earthly strife From strength to strength advancing, only he His soul well knit and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.”