1. Freemasonry for Non-Masons

"Masonry is too great an institution to have been made in a day, much less by a few men, but was a slow evolution through long time, unfolding its beauty as it grew. Indeed, it was like one of its own cathedrals which one generation of builders wrought and vanished, and another followed, until, amidst vicissitudes of time and change, of decline and revival, the order itself became a temple of Freedom and Fraternity."

"Each lodge is an oasis of equality and good will in a desert of strife, working to wield mankind into a great league of sympathy and services, which, by the terms of our definition, it seeks to exhibit now on a small scale."

"Instead of criticizing Masonry, let us thank God for one altar where no man is asked to surrender his liberty of thought and become an indistinguishable atom on a mass of sectarian agglomeration."

"It is not strange that men of note and learning, attracted by the wealth of symbolism on Masonry, as well as by its spirit of fraternity perhaps, also by its secrecy began at an early date to ask to be accepted as members of the order; hence Accepted Masons. How far back the custom of admitting such men to the Lodge goes is not clear, but hints of it are discernible in the oldest documents of the order."

"Whether there were organized orders of builders in the early times no one can tell, through there may have been. No matter; man mixed thought and worship with his work, and as he cut his altar stones and fitted them together he thought out a faith by which to live."

"The entire object of true education is to make people not merely to do the right things, but enjoy them; not merely industrious, but to love industry; not merely learn, but to love purity; not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice."

"Freemasonry teaches moral lessons and self-knowledge.  Here Masons take their stand.  From this point, we as Freemasons start our journey, our quest for self-knowledge, a path leading us to the inmost parts of ourselves, our own psyche and our own soul."

I regard the Masonic institution as one of the means ordained by the Supreme Architect to enable mankind to work out the problem of destiny; to fight against, and overcome, the weaknesses and imperfections of his nature, and at last to attain to that true life of which death is the herald and the grave the portal.