W. E. H. Lecky Quotes & Sayings

Finally, spurred by the appetite to which he was indifferent, he took any one, read the printing on the parti-colored label of paper. He held the soup can like a skull; and at once he did not want it. The soup was made from celery. Mr. Lecky put it back. He stood in mild misery, harassed again by the plague of a will impotent in its restored freedom.
If the mind cannot direct, it can be cunning to protect its ease. Mr. Lecky now proposed a fantastic pact to himself. He shut his eyes. He reached again and took a can. Eyes still shut, he ripped the label from it, crumpled and threw away the paper. Now he could not tell what he had until he opened it. — James Gould Cozzens

Making every allowance for the errors of the most extreme fallibility, the history of Catholicism would on this hypothesis represent an amount of imposture probably unequaled in the annals of the human race. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Mr. Lecky never got any farther than the third floor. Not conscious of impossible fatigue, feeling less than his distress of the morning, he was notwithstanding seized by a faintness. This sudden spinning dizzied him. A darkness as impalpable, more discrete, yet blacker than night's, spun out from dancing points to overlapping disks. They were so wide, so close to his eyes, that he could not strike them off. He had only a second given him to see and apprehend. This same second loosened his grip on consciousness. He seemed to let go, hardly struggling. His muscles let go everywhere, too. He had time to hear, like some remote accident, the bang of the shotgun, gone, the smash of glass in at least one flashlight lens. This was the thin segment of the actual second, and Mr. Lecky knew nothing of himself slumping to lie on the stairs with the things he had dropped. — James Gould Cozzens

[T]he superstitions to be feared in the present day are much less religious than political; and of all the forms of idolatry I know none more irrational and ignoble than this blind worship of mere numbers. - William Lecky, Democracy and Liberty — Bryan Caplan

On the Continent, every attempt to substitute a lighter punishment for death was fiercely denounced as a direct violation of the Divine law. Indeed, some persons went so far as to question the lawfulness of strangling the witch before she was burnt. Her crime, they said, was treason against the Almighty, and therefore to punish it by any but the most agonizing deaths was an act of disrespect to Him. Besides, the penalty in the Levitical code was stoning, and stoning had been pronounced by the Jewish theologians to be a still more painful death than the stake. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Spain and southern Italy, in which Catholicism has most deeply implanted its roots, are even now, probably beyond all other countries in Europe, those in which inhumanity to animals is most wanton and unrebuked. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind ... The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man. Not till the education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and classical free thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Whenever the clergy were at the elbow of the civil arm, no matter whether they were Catholic or Protestant, persecution was the result. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Whether he remained here, or found a means to leave, he ought certainly to possess himself of the best possible weapons. By the term Mr. Lecky understood some sort of firearm. The fact that he was totally unacquainted with the use of guns assisted him in the illusion that, given a revolver, he would instantly become formidable. Trusting machines as he did, he regarded a revolver as a small killing machine. He believed that its operation required little more than pointing and pulling a trigger. The revolver would obediently deliver, unerring and fast as light, death to a great distance. — James Gould Cozzens

When it began, Christianity was regarded as a system entirely beyond the range and scope of human reason; it was impious to question; it was impious to examine; it was impious to discriminate. On the other hand, it was visibly instinct with the supernatural. Miracles of every order and degree of magnitude were flashing forth incessantly from all its parts. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Mr. Lecky could see well enough to eat. He brought his chair over and sat down gratefully while he consumed, but with appetite now, the ham and biscuits which he had disdained in the morning. Even the fact that he was using to cut his ham the knife which had cut a human throat did not disturb him. He had taken care to see that the blade was wiped clean. — James Gould Cozzens

Abortion ... was probably regarded by the average Roman of the later days of Paganism much as Englishmen in the last century regarded convivial excesses, as certainly wrong, but so venial as scarcely to deserve censure. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was inundated with blood, which was shed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the ecclesiastical authorities. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

There have certainly been many periods in history when virtue was more rare than under the Caesars; but there has probably never been a period when vice was more extravagant or uncontrolled. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

The simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind, than all the (investigations) disquisitions of philosophers and than all the exhortations of moralists. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

The morals of men are more governed by their pursuits than by their opinions. A type of virtue is first formed by circumstances, and men afterwards make it the model upon which their theories are framed. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Whence has come thy lasting power. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

In proportion to its power, Protestantism has been as persecuting as Catholicism. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

When the Church obtained the direction of the civil power, she soon modified or abandoned the tolerant maxims she had formerly inculcated; and, in the course of a few years, restrictive laws were enacted, both against the Jews and against the heretics. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

even skeptics have granted and recognized His unparalleled life and impact. Here, for example, is an opinion from a highly respected scholar, the famed historian W. E. H. Lecky: The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive in its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said that the simple record of three years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.1 — Ravi Zacharias

Passions weaken, but habits strengthen, with age, and it is the great task of youth to set the current of habit and to form the tastes which are most productive of happiness in life. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

I venture to maintain that there are multitudes to whom the necessity of discharging the duties of a butcher would be so inexpressibly painful and revolting, that if they could obtain a flesh diet on no other condition, they would relinquish it forever. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Physical science has taught us to associate Deity with the normal rather than with the abnormal. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

The recognition of his carelessness filled Mr. Lecky with fear and anger. In the dusk his eerie heart could anticipate the hours of terror which he had laid up for himself. Sounds, real or imaginary, the silences and secrets of the night, the working of his own mind, skilled in cruel illusion and rich in evil fancy, would find him without recourse. — James Gould Cozzens

There are times in the lives of most of us, when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

All over Europe the organs that represent dogmatic interests are in permanent opposition to the progressive tendencies around them, and are rapidly sinking into contempt. In every country in which a strong political life is manifested, the secularisation of politics is the consequence. Each stage of that movement has been initiated and effected by those who are most indifferent to dogmatic theology, and each has been opposed by those who are most occupied with theology. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Nothing, indeed, could be more unlike the tone of the [Patristic] Fathers, than the cold, passionless, and prudential theology of the eighteenth century; a theology which regarded Christianity as an admirable auxiliary to the police force, and a principle of decorum and of cohesion in society, but which carefully banished from it all enthusiasm, veiled or attenuated all its mysteries, and virtually reduced it to an authoritative system of moral philosophy. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

It had been boldly predicted by some of the early Christians that the conversion of the world would lead to the establishment of perpetual peace. In looking back, with our present experience, we are driven to the melancholy conclusion that, instead of diminishing the number of wars, ecclesiastical influence has actually and very seriously increased it. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Highly graduate taxation realizes most completely the supreme danger of democracy, creating a state of things in which one class imposes on another burdens which it is not asked to share, and impels the State into vast schemes of extravagance, under the belief that the whole costs will be thrown upon others. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

All history shows that, in exact proportion as nations advance in civilisation, the accounts of miracles taking place among them become rarer and rarer, until at last they entirely cease. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Routine shortens and variety lengthens time, and it is therefore in the power of men to do something to regulate its pace. A life with many landmarks, a life which is much subdivided when those subdivisions are not of the same kind, and when new and diverse interests, impressions, and labours follow each other in swift and distinct successions, seems the most long ... — William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Mr. Lecky had proceeded quickly for several moments before he drew up, shocked. A few more steps and he might have stumbled on his idiot, for the stairs he had been approaching were the front stairs to the silverware department, which he wished to avoid. Shaken by this unpleasant mistake, he re-directed himself, turning back down the center of the dark floor. Certainly he did not want to see the corpse; the corpse could not very well want to see him. — James Gould Cozzens