Fraternity

“ That true liberty, which infringes not the freedom of my brother; that equality which recognises no noblemen but the men of noble thoughts and noble deeds; that fraternity which links the weak arm-in-arm with the strong, and, teaching humankind that union is strength, compels them to fraternise, and links them together in that true brotherhood for which we strive. ”

“ It is the equality of fear and of selfishness, and not the equality of courage and philanthropy. And brotherhood too must be invoked,—fraternity as we may better call it in the jargon of the school. Such politicians tell one much of fraternity, and define it too. It consists in a general raising of the hat to all mankind; in a daily walk that never hurries itself into a jostling trot, inconvenient to passengers on the pavement;—in a placid voice, a soft smile, and a small cup of coffee on a boulevard. ”

“ I tell them that fraternity is a dream, an obscure and uncertain sentiment; that while it is unnatural for a man to hate one whom he does not know, it is equally unnatural to love him. You can build nothing on fraternity. Nor on liberty, either; it is too relative a thing in a society where all the elements subdivide each other by force.
But equality is always the same. Liberty and fraternity are words while equality is a fact. Equality should be the great human formula—social equality, for while individuals have varying values, each must have an equal share in the social life; ”

“ While these are describing innumerable circles, the sliding fraternity in another part form parallel lines; each, of each class, vies with the other in feats of activity, all enjoy the exhilarating pastime, and every face is illumined with cheerfulness. ”

“ We, in the goodness and simplicity of our hearts, and from fear of being suspected of retrograde tendencies, fraternise—excuse the expression—with all kinds of human trash, and preach equality and fraternity with upstarts and nouveaux riches! ”

“ My own life will be forever different by reason of the friendship of two upper class men in my university days. Such friendships are wholesome for both the younger and the older men.
The fraternity serves as a convenient basis for fellowship when a man visits another college or when alumni return to their alma mater. The house of one’s own fraternity is open to him, and affords opportunity for him to come into touch with the eager, throbbing life about him. ”

“ Discipline your heart that you may see in man everywhere a brother, whose keeper you are. Let fraternity be, not a theory only, but a realized fact, and then a factor of your life. Train your eye to watch for others' needs, to read another's woe. Train your soul to sympathy, and your hand to helpfulness ”

“ I have been trying to impress on you that the fraternity is most important while you are in college, and, believe me, it's damned important. A fellow has a hell of a time if he gets into the wrong fraternity.... I am sure that you are going to get a lot of bids. Don't choose hastily. Spend to-morrow thinking the various bunches over—and choose the one that has the fellows that you like best, no matter what its standing on the campus is. Be sure that you like the fellows ”

“ The fraternities are aristocratic in that they are destructive to freedom of intercourse. The fraternal spirit is the great modern separator. It builds first a high wall between the Greeks and the barbarians, and then a maze of social distinctions between fraternity and fraternity. ”

“ The oldest truly American fraternity has grown greater, stronger and better in our Reservation and its present position fills with pride those who have assisted in its marvelous growth during the past Great Sun, and every member must rejoice in his affiliation with such a powerful thoroughly American organization. ”

“ Why increase the difference which we would all gladly lose sight of? Our ideals are the same as those of every true college woman, and the banding together into a fraternity is a help toward these ideals. Why refuse any college woman this help?
It is not merely a question of ideals and of the help of friends, but of definite social values, such as, for example, more intimate association with members of the faculty, more opportunities for meeting distinguished guests, and so on. Why should the fraternities have the monopoly of these social pleasures and assets? ”

“ The fraternity man has in view something beyond his own individual pleasure or success. He is taught to aid some fraternity brother who has good prospects, in athletics, in a race for some class honor, or in debate. Mutual admiration, a common enthusiasm, a corporate ambition and the spirit of cooperation, [Pg 46] are thus developed in the whole group by a feeling of common interest.
The fraternity brings the lower class man into closer touch with upper class men. The first year man is not a mere unbaked freshman to the juniors and seniors in his fraternity. ”

“ If to bear the same name, to be born on the same soil, and to speak the same tongue, creates bonds so powerful and so devoted a defence of common interests, fraternity in the Catholic faith yields the palm in nothing to any other fraternity whatsoever for the powerfulness of its effects. ”

“ The fraternity men have a pride in: their societies, and we know a quiet word to influential members will do more to restrain and reclaim an erring student than any amount of personal admonition could have done. If the arguments and persuasions of friends have no effect, rare indeed must be the case where, if a chapter does expel a brother, it does not immediately sober him, and maybe drive him from the college to begin a new career elsewhere with better resolutions. ”

“ Certain senior societies, of which the oldest is the Skull and Bones, which are inter-fraternity societies admitting freely members of the fraternities, are more prominent at Yale than the fraternities themselves. ”

“ We say to the college faculties, use the fraternities instead of abusing them. The proclaimed objects of the societies cannot degrade, and we have shown that a tendency to depart to vicious practices may be checked by an appeal to the societies themselves. If all fails, expel the students, break up the chapter, and explain the circumstances to the fraternity authorities. ”

“ It must be confessed, however, that unescapable traditions and certain inexorable conditions of our brotherhood tend to a modification of the standards of truthfulness which have been set up in other quarters. Beyond doubt, our members should be as reliable in statement as our traditions and full enjoyment of fraternity membership will permit. ”

“ The fraternity men were wearier than the freshmen. They sat up until the small hours every morning discussing the freshmen they had entertained the night before.
Hugh was in a daze. Over and over he heard the same words with only slight variations. A fraternity man would slap a fat book with an excited hand and exclaim: "This is 'Baird's Manual,' the final authority on fraternities, and it's got absolutely all the dope. You can see where we stand. ”

“ When one remembers the movement against the high-school fraternities, one is tempted for a moment to hope for a revision of popular opinion. How should what is generally condemned for the years between twelve and twenty be approved for the years between sixteen and twenty-four? Is there so wide a difference between the fraternity idea as it finds expression in the high-school girl of eighteen and the college girl of eighteen? The very women who most earnestly advocate the system in the colleges are bent upon driving it out of the high schools. ”

“ The fraternity is a pleasant club: it gets you into campus activities; and it gives you a social life in college that you can't get without it. It isn't very important to most men after they graduate. Just try to raise some money from the alumni some time, and you'll find out. Some of them remain undergraduates all their lives, and they think that the fraternity is important, but most of them hardly think of it except when they come back to reunions. ”

“ There are certain credits to be entered in making up a trial balance for the fraternity. It marks out a definite group of special friends for closer association. One cannot become intimately acquainted with the whole human race or even with as much of it as happens to be present in a large high school or college. Whether it is done in organized or in unorganized ways, there must come a process of selection by which one’s social interests are kept to a manageable size. ”

“ Whereas one will search American cities in vain for the labour temples one discovers to-day in Europe from Belgium to Italy, one finds that the fraternal lodge generally occupies a site of dignity and importance. There were doubtless many excellent reasons for the strange proliferation of professional fraternity in the American city, but perhaps the strongest reason was the absence of any other kind of fraternity. ”

“ In the noblest of these confraternities, very rarely in the lifetime of any one member does he come into personal contact with another of the same rank, almost never into personal contact with more than two or three others of the same rank; yet their spirit of fraternity is perfect, and with the dead of his brotherhood each may hold frequent and solemn communion. These rare meetings of the living seldom occur in the bustling streets and busy marts ”

“ Therefore, in recognition of the fraternity which inspires the greatest tasks which have yet fallen to the lot of so many peoples, working together for a common end, we receive your compliment to our country, and for this purpose I have thus detained you to hear this imperfect expression of our thanks. ”

“ The gloomy and almost inaccessible situation chosen by this strange fraternity for their convent--their rigid separation from human intercourse--the infringible taciturnity imposed upon themselves--and the terrible severity of their penances, are certainly circumstances more resembling the visionary indulgence of fantasy and fiction, than actual realities to be met with among living men, and in the present day. ”

“ But, besides these, there exist other considerations which lead friendship and fraternity to a higher degree among the members of the same religious Order. All in the novitiate have been cast in the same mould, or, rather, have imbibed the milk of knowledge and piety from the breasts of the same mother. All follow the same rules; all tend to the same end by the same means; all from morning to night, and during their whole lives, perform the same exercises, live under the same roof, work, sanctify themselves, suffer and rejoice together. ”

“ If pride of rank was generated in this fraternity of gentlemen, so also was scorn of lies and baseness. If there was no brotherhood of man, there was the brotherhood of equals. The most beautiful friendships arose from common dangers and common duties. ”

“ In boyhood we suppose that all gentlemen of mature age who happen to be brothers must naturally have fraternal feelings; in mature life we know the truth, having discovered that there are many brothers between whom no sentiment of fraternity exists. ”

“ He caught insensibly the polished tone, at once so light and so cordial, of his new-made friends. With all the efforts of the democrats to establish equality and fraternity, it is among the aristocrats that equality and fraternity are most to be found. ”

“ There is a constant tendency in any fraternity house to spend more time and more money than many a student can afford. No fellow of spirit can allow others to treat him, take him to the theater, show him all manner of attentions without feeling an obligation resting upon him to return these courtesies. A few men in a fraternity with rich fathers, large allowances, and warm hearts, can, with no sort of wrong intent, set the pace in such a way as to demoralize a whole group of young men. ”

“ Austin’s leathern girdle comprehends a great many devotees. Italy, Spain, and Portugal are the countries where are seen the greatest number of these fraternities, some of which assume the name of arch-fraternity. Pope Clement VII. instituted the arch-fraternity of charity, which distributes 346bread every Sunday among the poor, and gives portions to forty poor girls on the feast of St. Jerome, their patron. The fraternity of death buries such dead as are abandoned by their relations, and causes masses to be celebrated for them.—Broughton. ”

“ It is not easy to overestimate the valuable work which this Christian principle of human fraternity is thus doing at the present day. It is recognized in many ways so common that we cease to think of them as what they are—expressions of the common brotherhood of man. ”

“ I take this to mean that they are more suited to discourses at fraternity banquets, as a kind of leaven to reminiscences of good old times, than to practical application outside the fraternity world. [3] That they may “have a dynamic force upon character” is doubtless true of the persons who do not develop beyond the stage at which they are propounded; that they lead to much real kindness among fraternity sisters in time of illness and trouble need not be doubted. ”

“ I fought with my pride in the matter for a long while. Then, at the end of a noon-time recitation, I spoke of it to a freshman with whom I had struck up a friendship two days old. The friendship ended there. He seemed scandalized at my mentioning fraternities at all: it was a subject far too sacred for discussion, evidently. He merely snapped back stiffly that he expected to be pledged to another fraternity sometime during the day, and that he did not [Pg 81] care to hurt his chances by talking too freely. ”

“ The fraternity, of whom it takes nine members to make a man, have naturally supposed that it would take nine saints to make one patron. It is clear, then, that it is not to one William, but to nine combined, that the guild address, or did in olden times address, their vows and acknowledgments ”