The Forerunner (1920)
Context: You are your own forerunner, and the towers you have builded are but the foundation of your giant-self. And that self too shall be a foundation.
And I too am my own forerunner, for the long shadow stretching before me at sunrise shall gather under my feet at the noon hour. Yet another sunrise shall lay another shadow before me, and that also shall be gathered at another noon.
Always have we been our own forerunners, and always shall we be. And all that we have gathered and shall gather shall be but seeds for fields yet unploughed. We are the fields and the ploughmen, the gatherers and the gathered.
“When, or who shall gather it, it does not in the least concern us to know. It is our business to plant the seed.”
Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XIX : Grand Pontiff, p. 316
Context: If not for slander and persecution, the Mason who would benefit his race must look for apathy and cold indifference in those whose good he seeks, in those who ought to seek the good of others. Except when the sluggish depths of the Human Mind are hroken up and tossed as with a storm, when at the appointed time a great Reformer comes, and a new Faith springs up and grows with supernatural energy, the progress of Truth is slower than the growth of oaks; and he who plants need not expect to gather. The Redeemer, at His death, had twelve disciples, and one betrayed and one deserted and denied Him. It is enough for us to know that the fruit will come in its due season. When, or who shall gather it, it does not in the least concern us to know. It is our business to plant the seed. It is God's right to give the fruit to whom He pleases; and if not to us, then is our action by so much the more noble.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Albert Pike 88
Confederate States Army general and Freemason 1809–1891Related quotes
Blessings (1998)
Context: When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others.
Letter VIII, July 3rd, 1870.
Letters to Carl Nägeli
“Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.”
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2
“Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.”
Sections 128 - 129
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
Context: Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.... It is thus with most of us: we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
“I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don’t know what to feed it.”
“I want to plant a few more seeds here and there before they plant me.”
T. Lucretius Carus the Epicurean Philosopher, His Six Books De Natura Rerum Done into English Verse (1682), Book III, lines 820–840