Albert Pike Quotes

"That which causes us trials shall yield us triumph: and that which make our hearts ache shall fill us with gladness. The only true happiness is to learn, to advance, and to improve: which could not happen unless we had commence with error, ignorance, and imperfection. We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light."

"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal."

"True thoughts have duration in themselves. If the thoughts endure, the seed is enduring; if the seed endures, the energy endures; if the energy endures, then will the spirit endure. The spirit is thought; thought is the heart; the heart is the fire; the fire is the Elixir."

"Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius."

"Faith begins where Reason sinks exhausted."

"The sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called Liberty."

"One man is equivalent to all Creation. One man is a World in miniature."

"A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire: not too near, lest he burn; nor too far off, lest he freeze."

"Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man's onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason."

"The universal medicine for the Soul is the Supreme Reason and Absolute Justice; for the mind, mathematical and practical Truth; for the body, the Quintessence, a combination of light and gold."

"We have all the light we need, we just need to put it in practice."

"To work with the hands or brain, according to our requirements and our capacities, to do that which lies before us to do, is more honorable than rank and title."

"Will is the dynamic soul-force."

"The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which it bears to them."

"Philosophy is a kind of journey, ever learning yet never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth."

"The Universe should be deemed an immense Being, always living, always moved and always moving in an eternal activity inherent in itself, and which, subordinate to no foreign cause, is communicated to all its parts, connects them together, and makes the world of things a complete and perfect whole."

"He who endeavors to serve, to benefit, and improve the world, is like a swimmer, who struggles against a rapid current, in a river lashed into angry waves by the wind. Often they roar over his head, often they beat him back and baffle him. Most men yield to the stress of the current. Only here and there the stout, strong heart and vigorous arms struggle on towards ultimate success."

"The double law of attraction and radiation or of sympathy and antipathy, of fixedness and movement, which is the principle of Creation, and the perpetual cause of life."