Top 120 Quotes & Sayings by James Anthony Froude - Page 2

I scarcely know a professional man I can like, and certainly not one who has been what the world calls successful, that I should the least wish to resemble.

It may be from some moral obliquity in myself, or from some strange disease; but for me, and I should think too for every human being in whose breast a human heart is beating, to know that one single creature is in that dreadful place would make a hell of heaven itself. And they have hearts in heaven, for they love there.

Courage is, on all hands, considered as an essential of high character.

I would sooner perish for ever than stoop down before a Being who may have power to crush me, but whom my heart forbids me to reverence.

A dreamer he was, and ever would be. Yet dreaming need not injure us, if it do but take its turn with waking; and even dreams themselves may be turned to beauty, by favoured men to whom nature has given the powers of casting them into form.

The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness. Where we find a heroic life appearing as the uniform fruit of a particular mode of opinion, it is childish to argue in the face of fact that the result ought to have been different.

Thy plain and open nature sees mankind But in appearance, not what they are.

Man is a real man, and can live and act manfully in this world, not in the strength of opinions, not according to what he thinks, but according to what he is .

Crime is not punished as an offense against God, but as prejudicial to society.

The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.

The war of good and evil is mightiest in mightiest souls, and even in the darkest time the heart will maintain its right against the hardest creed.

The moral of human life is never simple, and the moral of a story which aims only at being true to human life cannot be expected to be any more so.

There is always a part of our being into which those who are dearer to us far than our own lives are yet unable to enter.

I think Nature, if she interests herself much about her children, must often feel that, like the miserable Frankenstein, with her experimenting among the elements of humanity, she has brought beings into existence who have no business here; who can do none of her work, and endure none of her favours; whose life is only suffering; and whose action is one long protest against the ill foresight which flung them into consciousness.

Now, to a single-minded man, who is either brave enough or reckless enough to surrender himself wholly to one idea, and look neither right nor left, but only forward, what earthly consequences may follow is not material. Persecution strengthens him; and so he is sure he is right, whether his course end in a prison or on a throne is no matter at all. But men of this calibre are uncommon in any age or in any country very uncommon in this age and this country.

What is right or duty without power ? To tell a man it is his duty to submit his judgment to the judgment of the church, is like telling a wife it is her duty to love her husband a thing easy to say, but meaning simply nothing. Affection must be won, not commanded.

Thirst of power and of riches now bear sway, The passion and infirmity of age.

But the world was also so constructed, owing to the nature of the Maker of it, that superior strength was found in the long run to lie with those who had the right on their side.

You cannot reason people into loving those whom they are not drawn to love; they cannot reason themselves into it; and there are some contrarieties of temper which are too strong even for the obligations of relationship.

Where nature is sovereign, there is no need of austerity and self-denial.

Mistakes are often the best teachers.

We must have the real thing before we can have a science of a thing.

Beautiful is old age—beautiful as the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorious summer. In the old man, Nature has fulfilled her work; she loads him with blessings; she fills him with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by his children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to a grave, to which he is followed with blessings. God forbid we should not call it beautiful.

To be enthusiastic about doing much with human nature is a foolish business indeed; and, throwing himself into his work as he was doing, and expecting so much from it, would not the tide ebb as strongly as it was flowing? It is a rash game this setting our hearts on any future beyond what we have our own selves control over. Things do not walk as we settle with ourselves they ought to walk, and to hope is almost the correlative of to be disappointed.

True greatness is the most ready to recognize and most willing to obey those simple outward laws which have been sanctioned by the experience of mankind.

We live merely on the crust or rind of things.

Look not to have your sepulchre built in after ages hy the same foolish hands which still ever destroy the living prophet. Small honour for you if they do build it; and may be they never will build it.

Minds vary in sensitiveness and in self-power, as bodies do in susceptibility of attraction and repulsion. When, when shall we learn that they are governed by laws as inexorable as physical laws, and that a man can as easily refuse to obey what has power over him as a steel atom can resist the magnet?

Charity is from person to person; and it loses half, far more than half, its moral value when the giver is not brought into personal relation with those to whom he gives.

I cut a hole in my heart and wrote with the blood.

English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.

Once, once for all, if you would save your heart from breaking, learn this lesson once for all you must cease, in this world, to believe in the eternity of any creed or form at all. Whatever grows in time is a child of time, and is born and lives, and dies at its appointed day like ourselves.

Nature is less partial than she appears, and all situations in life have their compensations along with them.

Life is more than a theory, and love of truth butters no bread: old men who have had to struggle along their way, who know the endless bitterness, the grave moral deterioration which follow an empty exchequer, may well be pardoned for an over-wish to see their sons secured from it; hunger, at least, is a reality.

Sacrifice is the first element of religion, and resolves itself in theological language into the love of God.

The moral system of the universe is like a document written in alternate ciphers, which change from line to line.

Women's eyes are rapid in detecting a heart which is ill at ease with itself, and, knowing the value of sympathy, and finding their own greatest happiness not in receiving it, but in giving it, with them to be unhappy is at once to be interesting.

If you think you can temper yourself into manliness by sitting here over your books, it is the very silliest fancy that ever tempted a young man to his ruin. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

In every department of life--in its business and in its pleasures, in its beliefs and in its theories, in its material developments and in its spiritual connections--we thank God that we are not like our fathers.

Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; [but] a creed is always sensitive.

It is ill changing the creed to meet each rising temptation. The soul is truer than it seems, and refuses to be trifled with.

I have nothing but myself to write about, no facts, no theories, no opinions, no adventures, no sentiments, nothing but my own poor barren individualism, of considerable interest to me, but I do not know why I should presume it will be so to you. Egotism is not tiresome, or it ought not to be, if one is sincere about oneself; but it is so hard to be sincere. Well, never mind, I mean to be, and you know me well enough to see through me when I am humbugging.

No person is ever good for much, that hasn't been swept off their feet by enthusiasm between ages twenty and thirty

Who shall say that those poor peasants were not acting in the spirit we most venerate, most adore; that theirs was not the true heart language which we cannot choose but love? And what has been their reward? They have sent down their name to be the by-word of all after ages; the worst reproach of the worst men a name convertible with atheism and devil-worship.

Our thoughts and our conduct are our own.

I think there is a spiritual scent in us which feels mischief coming, as they say birds scent storms.

What is called virtue in the common sense of the word has nothing to do with this or that man's prosperity, or even happiness.

The Providence that watches over the affairs of men works out of their mistakes, at times, a healthier issue than could have been accomplished by their wisest forethought.

Nature is not a partisan, but out of her ample treasue house she produces children in infinite variety, of which she is equally the mother, and disowns none of them.

There are epidemics of nobleness as well as epidemics of disease.

Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws, so far as we can read them.

I have long been convinced that the Christian Eucharist is but a continuation of the Eleusinian mysteries. St Paul, in using the word teleiois, almost confirms this.

High original genius is always ridiculed on its first appearance; most of all by those who have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the established lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it.

We are complex, and therefore, in our natural state, inconsistent, beings, and the opinion of this hour need not be the opinion of the next.

I cannot think the disputes and jealousies of Heaven are tried and settled by the swords of earth.

Woe to the unlucky man who as a child is taught, even as a portion of his creed, what his grown reason must forswear.

Experience is no more transferable in morals than in art.

I believe that fallen creatures perish, perish for ever, for only good can live, and good has not been theirs; but how durst men forge our Saviour's words "eternal death " into so horrible a meaning? And even if he did use other words, and seem to countenance such a meaning for them (and what witness have we that He did, except that of men whose ignorance or prejudice might well have interpreted these words wrongly as they did so many others?

For me this world was neither so high nor so low as the Church would have it; chequered over with its wild light shadows, I could love it and all the children of it, more dearly, perhaps, because it was not all light.

Instead of man to love, we have a man-god to worship . From being the example of devotion, he is its object; the religion of Christ ended with his life , and left us instead but the Christian religion.