James Anthony Froude Quotes
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There are epidemics of nobleness as well as epidemics of disease.
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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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Show me if I am wrong. It is easy to be mistaken. But do not tell me it is wicked of me to have thought all this, for it is not - I am certain it is not.
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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.
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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 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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How true it is that arguments have only power over us while the temper is disposed to listen to them!
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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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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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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.
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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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You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
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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.
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To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair.
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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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The best that we can do for one another is to exchange our thoughts freely; and that, after all, is about all.
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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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A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.
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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.
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Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.
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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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The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.
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Experience is no more transferable in morals than in art.
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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.