Inge Quotes & Sayings

In praising science, it does not follow that we must adopt the very poor philosophies which scientific men have constructed. In philosophy they have much more to learn than to teach. — Dean Inge

If we feel that any habit or pursuit, harmless in itself, is keeping us from God and sinking us deeper in the things of earth; if we find that things which others can do with impunity are for us the occasion of falling, then abstinence is our only course. Abstinence alone can recover for us the real value of what should have been for our help but which has been an occasion of falling ... It is necessary that we should steadily resolve to give up anything that comes between ourselves and God. — William Ralph Inge

Two chief pitfalls into which the mystic is liable to fall
dreamy inactivity and Antinomianism. — William Ralph Inge

It was said that Mr. Gladstone could persuade most people of most things, and himself of anything. — Dean Inge

A good government remains the greatest of human blessings and no nation has ever enjoyed it. — Dean Inge

No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism. — William Ralph Inge

Therefore from the storehouse of His Passion I borrow the price of my debt, — William Ralph Inge

The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive. — William Ralph Inge

The strongest wish of a vast number of earnest men and women to-day is for a basis of religious belief which shall rest, not upon tradition or external authority or historical evidence, but upon the ascertainable facts of human experience. The craving for immediacy, which we have seen to be characteristic of all mysticism, now takes the form of a desire to establish the validity of the God-consciousness as a normal part of the healthy inner life. — William Ralph Inge

Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art. — William Ralph Inge

In dealing with Englishmen you can be sure of one thing only, that the logical solution will not be adopted. — William Ralph Inge

The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so. — William Ralph Inge

Well concerning the world records that I did, I think it helps a lot to me, yeah. I think it's a very individual thing because I heard some people say, like, oh I don't like it at all. But I definitely, for me it really made a big difference. — Inge De Bruijn

The great discovery of the nineteenth century, that we are of one blood with the lower animals, has created new ethical obligations which have not yet penetrated the public conscience. The clerical profession has been lamentably remiss in preaching this obvious duty. — William Ralph Inge

It takes strong men and women to love ... people strong enough inside themselves to love ... without humiliation. — William Inge

The command, 'Be fruitful and multiply', was promulgated, according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two persons. — William Ralph Inge

Joy is the triumph of life; it is the sign that we are living our true life as spiritual beings. — William Ralph Inge

Yeah, that's what kind of, we get the idea a little bit yeah, because other people from different countries also try as hard as they can to get a medal or a gold medal in the Olympic Games. And you know, if they can work hard, we can work hard as well. — Inge De Bruijn

The Devil deserves zero tolerance. — William Ralph Inge

Boredom is a certain sign that we are allowing our faculties to rust in idleness. — William Ralph Inge

Originality is undetected plagiarism. — William Ralph Inge

Our real self is not the captive of Space and Time — William Ralph Inge

It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion. — William Ralph Inge

It is a harder and a nobler task to preserve detachment in a crowd than in a cell; the little daily sacrifices of family life are often a greater trial than self-imposed mortifications. — William Ralph Inge

At one stopover on the train journey home, Hans told his sister Inge later, he saw a young girl with the Star of David on her breast; she was repairing tracks on the line, along with other people with yellow badges on their clothes. Her face was pallid, sunken in; her eyes, beyond grief and terror. Impulsively, Hans thrust his rations in her hand. She looked up at him, then at his uniform. She threw the packet of food to the ground.
He scooped it up, wiped off the dust, and picked a daisy growing by the side of the tracks. He placed the package, with the daisy on top, at her feet. He said, "I would have liked to give you a little pleasure." He boarded the train.
When he looked back, the girl was standing there, watching the train disappear, the flower in her hair. — Jud Newborn

We should think of the church as an orchestra in which the different churches play on different instruments while a Divine Conductor calls the tune. — William Ralph Inge

The game of life is worth playing, but the struggle is the prize. — William Ralph Inge

The right use of leisure is no doubt a harder problem than the right use of our working hours. The soul is dyed the color of its leisure thoughts. — William Ralph Inge

The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got. — William Ralph Inge

There is no limit to the noble aspirations which the words "my country" may evoke. — William Ralph Inge

Of all tyrannies a country can suffer, the worst is the tyranny of the majority. — William Inge

The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense. — Dean Inge

Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking. — William Inge

Gambling is a disease of barbarians superficially civilized. — Dean Inge

I have a tendency, after a play of mine is produced, to look back on it disparagingly, seeing only its faults; before production, I see only its virtues. — William Inge

Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man. — William Ralph Inge

Even the paradise of fools is not an unpleasant abode while it is inhabitable. — William Ralph Inge

Admiration for ourselves and our institutions is too often measured by our contempt and dislike for foreigners. — William Ralph Inge

In my heart I like to remain an amateur, in the sense of being in love with what I'm doing, forever astonished again at the endless possibilities of seeing and using the camera as a recording tool. — Inge Morath

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. — William Ralph Inge

Take away fear, and the battle of Freedom is half won. — William Ralph Inge

All human love is a holy thing, the holiest thing in our experience. — William Ralph Inge

The greatest obstacle to progress is not man's inherited pugnacity, but his incorrigible tendency to parasitism. — William Ralph Inge

The jealous man is so preoccupied with what he hasn't got that he fails to appreciate the value of what he has got. He loses the ability to feel glad because the sun is shining. He doesn't see the wonder and the newness of the beginning of spring. — William Ralph Inge

I shall ask no more than that you agree with Dean Inge that even though counting heads is not an ideal way to govern, at least it is better than breaking them. — Learned Hand

Each generation takes a special pleasure in removing the household gods of its parents from their pedestals, and consigning them to the cupboard. — William Ralph Inge

Faith is an act of rational choice, which determines us to act as if certain things were true, and in the confident expectation that they will prove to be true. — Dean Inge

To take pictures had become a necessity and I did not want to forgo it for anything. — Inge Morath

All faith consists essentially in the recognition of a world of spiritual values behind, yet not apart from, the world of natural phenomena. — Dean Inge

We must cut our coat according to our cloth, and adapt ourselves to changing circumstances. — William Ralph Inge

A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings. — Dean Inge

Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself. — William Ralph Inge

The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot. — William Ralph Inge

The modern world belongs to the half-educated, a rather difficult class, because they do not realize how little they know. — William Ralph Inge

Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival. — William Ralph Inge

You can't come up with ideas if you don't see first. — Inge Druckrey

We have a large circle - all of them anti-Hitler," one participant told Inge. "And each of these friends has his own separate circle which is anti-Hitler, and so on and so forth: a great underground network against Hitler. If only someone could get them to act collectively. — Russell Freedman

Action is the normal completion of the act of will which begins as prayer. That action is not always external, but it is always some kind of effective energy. — Dean Inge

So, Henrik, is the weather good for fishing?" Papa asked cheerfully, and listened briefly. Then he continued, "I'm sending Inge to you today with the children, and she will be bringing you a carton of cigarettes. "Yes, just one," he said, after a moment. Annemarie couldn't hear Uncle Henrik's words. "But there are a lot of cigarettes available in Copenhagen now, if you know where to look," he went on, "and so there will be others coming to you as well, I'm sure." But it wasn't true. Annemarie was quite certain it wasn't true. Cigarettes were the thing that Papa missed, the way Mama missed coffee. He complained often - he had complained only yesterday - that there were no cigarettes in the stores. — Lois Lowry

Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture; and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves. — Dean Inge

The vulgar mind always mistakes the exceptional for the important. — William Ralph Inge

The church is only a secular institution in which the half-educated speak to the half-converted. — William Ralph Inge

When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve, "My dear, we live in an age of transition." — William Ralph Inge

Christianity promises to make men free; it never promises to make them independent. — William Ralph Inge

Photography is essentially a personal matter - a search for inner truth. — Inge Morath

The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values. — William Ralph Inge

The soul is dyed by the color of its leisure hours. — William Ralph Inge

I love to smile. — Inge De Bruijn

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other people's. — Dean Inge

No word in our language not even "Socialism" has been employed more loosely than " Mysticism ." ... The history of the word begins in close connexion with the Greek mysteries. A mystic is one who has been, or is being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about which he must keep his mouth shut ... — William Ralph Inge

Jutta whispers, A girl got kicked out of the swimming hole today. Inge Hachmann. They said they wouldn't let us swim with a half-breed. Unsanitary. A half-breed, Werner. Aren't we half-breeds too? Aren't we half our mother, half our father? — Anthony Doerr

I can tell by now that you are wondering whether I can be trusted as a narrator. Why didn't I dump Inge and head for a Singles Bar? The answer is her breasts. — Jeanette Winterson

Don't break the silence unless you can improve on it. — William Ralph Inge

Beneath the dingy uniformity of international fashions in dress, man remains what he has always been; a splendid fighting animal, a self-sacrificing hero, and a blood thirsty savage. — William Ralph Inge

This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better. — William Ralph Inge

We read history in order not to have to repeat it. — Inge Scholl

But the instinct of hoarding, like all other instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the institution of private property comes another institution-that of plunder and brigandage. In private life, no motive of action is at present so powerful and so persistent as acquisitiveness, which unlike most other desires, knows no satiety. The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got, and not till then. — William Ralph Inge

Hatred toward any human being cannot exist in the same heart as love to God. — William Ralph Inge

Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater. — William Ralph Inge

Civilization is a disease which is almost invariably fatal. — William Ralph Inge

The whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and in the passive. — William Ralph Inge

The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things. — Dean Inge

The world as it is is the world as God sees it, not as we see it. Our vision is distorted, not so much by the limits of finitude as by sin and ignorance. But the more we raise ourselves in the scale of being, the more will our ideas about God and the world correspond to reality. — William R. Inge

I may have been 15 or 16 years old when, on a Sunday morning, I was sitting at home together with my mother and sister, and the floor began to move under us. The hanging lamp swayed. It was very strange. My father came into the room. "It was an earthquake," he said. The center had evidently been at a considerable distance, for the movements felt slow and not shaky. In spite of a great deal of effort, an accurate epicenter was never found. This was my only experience with an earthquake until I became a seismologist 20 years later. — Inge Lehmann

A man is never so truly and intensely himself as when he is most possessed by God. It is impossible to say where, in the spiritual life, the human will leaves off and divine grace begins. — William Ralph Inge

Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them. — Dean Inge

If the universe is running down like a clock, the clock must have been wound up at a date which we could name if we knew it. The world, if it is to have an end in time, must have had a beginning in time. — Dean Inge

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and a common hatred of its neighbors. — William Ralph Inge

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can't sit on it. — William Ralph Inge

It is quite natural and inevitable that, if we spend sixteen hours daily of our waking lives in thinking about the affairs of the world and five minutes in thinking about God and our souls, this world will seem two hundred times more real to us than God. — William Ralph Inge

Experience proves that none is so cruel as the disillusioned sentimentalist. — William Ralph Inge

The end is but a new beginning for the eternal Ba. — Inge H. Borg

Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove. — Dean Inge

To marry is to get a binocular view of life. — Dean Inge

You should know how many incompetent men I had to compete with-in vain. — Inge Lehmann

Faith is an act of self-consecration, in which the will, the intellect, and the affections all have their place. — William Ralph Inge

There is a lot more to life than we human understand. — Inge Sargent

Civilization is being poisoned by its own waste products. — William Ralph Inge

Photography is a strange phenomenon ... You trust your eye and cannot help but bare your soul. — Inge Morath

I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour. — William Ralph Inge