Best William Temple Quotes & Sayings

There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple.
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with't — William Shakespeare

To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God. — William Temple

When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over. — William Temple

The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men. — William Hazlitt

Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself one way or the other at all ... The humility which consists in being a great deal occupied about yourself, and saying you are of little worth, is not Christian humility. It is one form of self-occupation and a very poor and futile one at that. — William Temple

The true Mason is the Tiler of the Temple of the Heart. — William Howard Taft

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new. — William Temple

When I pray, coincidences happen," said Archbishop William Temple; "when I don't, they don't. — Philip Yancey

The best rules to form a young man, are, to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it. — William Temple

There is no structural organization of society which can bring about the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth since all systems can be perverted by the selfishness of man. The Malvern Manifesto: Drawn up by a Conference of the Province of York, January 10, 1941; signed for the Conference by Temple, then Archbishop of York . — William Temple

No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else. — William Temple

Ladies and Gentlemen, we deem it the central revelation of Western experience that man cannot ineradicably stain himself, for the wells of regeneration are infinitely deep. No temple has ever been so profaned that it cannot be purified; no man is ever truly lost; no nation is irrevocably dishonored. Khrushchev cannot take permanent advantage of our temporary disadvantage, for it is the West he is fighting. And in the West there lie, however encysted, the ultimate resources, which are moral in nature. Khrushchev is not aware that the gates of hell shall not prevail against us. Even out of the depths of despair, we take heart in the knowledge that it cannot matter how deep we fall, for there is always hope. In the end, we will bury him. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit. — William Temple

We shall say without hesitation that the atheist who is moved by love is moved by the Spirit of God; an atheist who lives by love is saved by his faith in the God whose existence (under that name) he denies. — William Temple

When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't, they don't. — William Temple

Learning passes for wisdom among those who want both. — William Temple

The greatest pleasure in life is love. — William Temple

Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose
all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable. — William Temple

There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others. — William Temple

Man's wisdom is his best friend; folly his worst enemy. — William Temple

The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor. — William Temple

If your prayer is selfish, the answer will be something that will rebuke your selfishness. You may not recognize it as having come at all, but it is sure to be there. — William Temple

All our problems are theological ones, William Temple said. All of them have to do with our relationship to God and his to us, and this is precisely why it makes sense to come to God with them. — Elisabeth Elliot

The groves were God's first temple. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them,
ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication. — William C. Bryant

Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they passed. — William Temple

Our present time is indeed a criticizing and critical time, hovering between the wish, and the inability to believe. Our complaints are like arrows shot up into the air at no target: and with no purpose they only fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves. — William Temple

Art is the effort to appreciate and express the God who is its Beauty. — William Temple

There can be no doubt that the young of today have to be protected against certain poisonous effects inherent in present-day civilization. Five social diseases surround them, even in early childhood. There is the decline in fitness due to modern methods of locomotion; the decline in initiative due to the widespread disease of spectatoritis; the decline in care and skill due to the weakened tradition of craftsmanship; the decline in self-discipline due to the ever-present availability of tranquilizers and stimulants, and the decline in compassion, which William Temple called spiritual death. — Kurt Hahn

I shall conclude with a saying of Alponsus, surnamed the Wise, King of Aragon - that among so many things as are by men possessed or pursued in the course of their lives, all the rest are baubles, besides old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to read! — William Temple

Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field, You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius! Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex: We cannot fight for love, as men ay do; We should be woo'd, and were not made to woo. I'll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell, To die upon the hand I love so well. — William Shakespeare

The problem of evil ... Why does God permit it? Or, if God is omnipotent, in which case permission and creation are the same, why did God create it? — William Temple

Christianity founds hospitals and atheists are cured in them, never knowing they owe their cure to Christ. — William Temple

True worship is when a person, through their person, attains intimacy and friendship with God. — William Temple

I prefer a God who once and for all impressed his will upon creation, to one who continually busied about modifying what he had already done. — William Temple

Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may be, have become as important to the English imagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by many poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as those of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like swallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the Giants. — William Butler Yeats

Set we forward; let
A Roman and a British ensign wave
Friendly together. So through Lud's town march,
And in the temple of the great Jupiter
Our peace we'll ratify, seal it with feasts.
Set on there! Never was a war did cease,
Ere bloody hands were washed, with such a peace. — William Shakespeare