F.H. Bradley Quotes & Sayings

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct. — F.H. Bradley

When I hear that "Possession is the grave of love," I remember that a religion may begin with the resurrection. — F.H. Bradley

True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat. — F.H. Bradley

There are those who so dislike the nude that they find something indecent in the naked truth. — F.H. Bradley

Up to a certain point every man is what he thinks he is. — F.H. Bradley

The mood in which my book was conceived and executed, was in fact to some extent a passing one. — F.H. Bradley

The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once. — F.H. Bradley

Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived. It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive. — F.H. Bradley

His mind is so open - so open that ideas simply pass through it. — F.H. Bradley

The propriety of some persons seems to consist in having improper thoughts about their neighbors. — F.H. Bradley

The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind. — F.H. Bradley

Eclecticism - every truth is so true that any truth must be false. — F.H. Bradley

It is good to know what a man is, and also what the world takes him for. But you do not understand him until you have learnt how he understands himself. — F.H. Bradley

The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil. — F.H. Bradley

Religion is rather the attempt to express the complete reality of goodness through every aspect of our being. — F.H. Bradley

We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings. — F.H. Bradley

I will begin with the self-styled "Christian" party, who profess to base their morality on the New Testament. But whether it is really more Christian to follow or to ignore the teachings of the Gospels I shall not discuss. — F.H. Bradley

Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink. — F.H. Bradley

Another occupation might have been better. — F.H. Bradley

The man who has ceased to fear has ceased to care. — F.H. Bradley

The man who is ready to prove that metaphysical knowledge is wholly impossible has no right here to any answer. He must be referred for conviction to the body of this treatise. And he can hardly refuse to go there, since he himself has, perhaps unknowingly, entered the arena. He is a brother metaphysician with a rival theory of first principles. — F.H. Bradley

One said of suicide, As long as one has brains one should not blow them out. And another answered, But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot. — F.H. Bradley

It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least. — F.H. Bradley

The Secret of Happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness. — F.H. Bradley

The deadliest foe to virtue would be complete self-knowledge. — F.H. Bradley

Where everything is bad it must be good to know the worst. — F.H. Bradley

I can myself conceive of nothing else than the experienced. — F.H. Bradley

There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us. — F.H. Bradley

The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is even condemned to find much of his own mind. — F.H. Bradley

The man whose nature is such that by one path alone his chief desire will reach consummation will try to find it on that path, whatever it may be, and whatever the world thinks of it; and if he does not, he is contemptible. — F.H. Bradley