James Anthony Froude Quotes - Page 3

The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness. Where we find a heroic life appearing as the uniform fruit of a particular mode of opinion, it is childish to argue in the face of fact that the result ought to have been different.

Truth only smells sweet forever, and illusions, however innocent, are deadly as the canker worm.

The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.

That in these times every serious person should not in his heart have felt some difliculty with the doctrines of the incarnation, I cannot helieve. We are not as we were. When Christianity was first published, the imagination of mankind presented the relation of heaven to earth very differently from what it does now.

Thy plain and open nature sees mankind But in appearance, not what they are.

Men think to mend their condition by a change of circumstances. They might as well hope to escape from their shadows.

Thirst of power and of riches now bear sway, The passion and infirmity of age.

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.

Where nature is sovereign, there is no need of austerity and self-denial.

Morality rests upon a sense of obligation; and obligation has no meaning except as implying a Divine command, without which it would cease to be.

The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue.

To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair.

I would sooner perish for ever than stoop down before a Being who may have power to crush me, but whom my heart forbids me to reverence.

We call heaven our home, as the best name we know to give it.

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.

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.

Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; [but] a creed is always sensitive.

High original genius is always ridiculed on its first appearance; most of all by those who have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the established lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it.

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.

English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.

Nature is less partial than she appears, and all situations in life have their compensations along with them.

What is called virtue in the common sense of the word has nothing to do with this or that man's prosperity, or even happiness.

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.

Minds vary in sensitiveness and in self-power, as bodies do in susceptibility of attraction and repulsion. When, when shall we learn that they are governed by laws as inexorable as physical laws, and that a man can as easily refuse to obey what has power over him as a steel atom can resist the magnet?

If you think you can temper yourself into manliness by sitting here over your books, it is the very silliest fancy that ever tempted a young man to his ruin. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.