James Anthony Froude Quotes & Sayings

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. — James Anthony Froude

Life is change, to cease to change is to cease to live; yet if you may shed a tear beside the death-bed of an old friend, let not your heart be silent on the dissolving of a faith. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

I could never fear a God who kept a hell prison-house. No, not though he flung me there because I refused. There is a power stronger than such a one; and it is possible to walk unscathed even in the burning furnace. — James Anthony Froude

Courage is, on all hands, considered as an essential of high character. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

Morality rests upon a sense of obligation; and obligation has no meaning except as implying a Divine command, without which it would cease to be. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

Every one of us ... knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys. — James Anthony Froude

Justice without wisdom is impossible. — James Anthony Froude

I believe in God, not because the Bible tells me that he is, but because my heart tells me so; and the same heart tells me we can only have His peace with us if we love Him and obey Him, and that we can only he happy when we each love our neighbour better than ourselves. — James Anthony Froude

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

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. — James Anthony Froude

To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair. — James Anthony Froude

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? — James Anthony Froude

Carelessness is inexcusable, and merits the inevitable sequence. — James Anthony Froude

A single seed of fact will produce in a season or two a harvest of calumnies; but sensible men will pay no attention to them. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

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

We read the past by the light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows fall, or as the point of vision alters. — James Anthony Froude

Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes. — James Anthony Froude

Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; but a belief is always sensitive. — James Anthony Froude

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

The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith. — James Anthony Froude

Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

Fling away your soul once for all, your own small self; if you will find it again. Count not even on immortality. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

Men think to mend their condition by a change of circumstances. They might as well hope to escape from their shadows. — James Anthony Froude

Morality, when vigorously alive, sees farther than intellect, and provides unconsciously for intellectual difficulties. — James Anthony Froude

The best that we can do for one another is to exchange our thoughts freely; and that, after all, is about all. — James Anthony Froude

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self. — James Anthony Froude

Experience is no more transferable in morals than in art. — James Anthony Froude

When a woman's heart is flowing over for the first time with deep and passionate love, she is all love. Every faculty of her soul rushes together in the intensity of the one feeling; thought, reflection, conscience, duty, the past, the future, they are names to her light as the breath which speaks them; her soul is full. — James Anthony Froude

We call heaven our home, as the best name we know to give it. — James Anthony Froude

Thirst of power and of riches now bear sway,
The passion and infirmity of age. — James Anthony Froude

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself. — James Anthony Froude

There are at bottom but two possible religions
that which rises in the moral nature of man, and which takes shape in moral commandments, and that which grows out of the observation of the material energies which operate in the external universe. — James Anthony Froude

The secret of a person's nature lies in their religion and what they really believes about the world and their place in it. — James Anthony Froude

The first duty of an historian is to be on guard against his own sympathies. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

The solitary side of our nature demands leisure for reflection upon subjects on which the dash and whirl of daily business, so long as its clouds rise thick about us, forbid the intellect to fasten itself. — James Anthony Froude

Where nature is sovereign, there is no need of austerity and self-denial. — James Anthony Froude

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

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. — James Anthony Froude

Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

There are epidemics of nobleness as well as epidemics of disease. — James Anthony Froude

In everyday things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty. — James Anthony Froude

We must have the real thing before we can have a science of a thing. — James Anthony Froude

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible. — James Anthony Froude

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

Where all are selfish, the sage is no better than the fool, and only rather more dangerous. — James Anthony Froude

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

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. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

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

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. — James Anthony Froude

That which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a low order of man, that which constitutes human goodness, human nobleness, is surely not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantage; but it is self-forgetfulness; it is self-sacrifice; it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantage, remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more right. — James Anthony Froude

We live merely on the crust or rind of things. — James Anthony Froude

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 ... — James Anthony Froude

We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

Our thoughts and our conduct are our own. — James Anthony Froude

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 ... — James Anthony Froude

Superior strength is found in the long run to lie with those who had right on their side. — James Anthony Froude

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

The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue. — James Anthony Froude

Truth only smells sweet forever, and illusions, however innocent, are deadly as the canker worm. — James Anthony Froude

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

Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in the world, insincerity is the most dangerous. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

The trials of life will not wait for us. They come at their own time, not caring much to inquire how ready we may be to meet them. — James Anthony Froude

Instruction does not prevent wasted time or mistakes; and mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

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? — James Anthony Froude

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing. — James Anthony Froude

The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the marvel of human society. — James Anthony Froude

Mistakes are often the best teachers. — James Anthony Froude

Scepticism, like wisdom, springs out in full panoply only from the brain of a god, and it is little profit to see an idea in its growth, unless we track its seed to the power which sowed it. — James Anthony Froude

Those who seek for something more than happiness in this world must not complain if happiness is not their portion. — James Anthony Froude

Human improvement is from within outward. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

I am convinced with Plato , with St. Paul, with St. Augustine, with Calvin , and with Leibnitz, that this universe, and every smallest portion of it, exactly fulfils the purpose for which Almighty God designed it. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

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. — James Anthony Froude

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

Just laws are no restraint upon the freedom of the good, for the good man desires nothing which a just law will interfere with. — James Anthony Froude

Men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal. — James Anthony Froude

Fear is the parent of cruelty. — James Anthony Froude