James Anthony Froude Quotes
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The soul of man is not a thing which comes and goes, is builded and decays like the elemental frame in which it is set to dwell, but a very living force, a very energy of God's organic will, which rules and moulds this universe.
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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.
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The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower.
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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.
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How true it is that arguments have only power over us while the temper is disposed to listen to them!
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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.
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Fear is the parent of cruelty.
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But the world was also so constructed, owing to the nature of the Maker of it, that superior strength was found in the long run to lie with those who had the right on their side.
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In everyday things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty.
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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...
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Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in the world, insincerity is the most dangerous.
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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.
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I cut a hole in my heart and wrote with the blood.
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You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
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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.
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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.
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To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair.
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He came, bringing with Him the knowledge that God is a Being of infinite goodness; that the service required of mankind is not a service of form or ceremony, but a service of obedience.
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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.
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I have nothing but myself to write about, no facts, no theories, no opinions, no adventures, no sentiments, nothing but my own poor barren individualism, of considerable interest to me, but I do not know why I should presume it will be so to you. Egotism is not tiresome, or it ought not to be, if one is sincere about oneself; but it is so hard to be sincere. Well, never mind, I mean to be, and you know me well enough to see through me when I am humbugging.
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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.
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Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.
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The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.
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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.