Best 107 quotes of William Ralph Inge on MyQuotes

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

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.

Admiration for ourselves and our institutions is too often measured by our contempt and dislike for foreigners.

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

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

All human love is a holy thing, the holiest thing in our experience.

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.

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.

A monarch frequently represents his subjects better that an elected assembly; and if he is a good judge of character he is likely to have more capable and loyal advisers.

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.

Beautiful thoughts hardly bring us to God until they are acted upon. No one can have a true idea of right until he does it.

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.

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

Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.

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

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.

Christianity promises to make men free; it never promises to make them independent.

Civilization is being poisoned by its own waste products.

Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.

Deliberate cruelty to our defenceless and beautiful little cousins is surely one of the meanest and most detestable vices of which a human being can be guilty.

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

Don't get up from the feast of life without paying for your share of it.

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

Even the paradise of fools is not an unpleasant abode while it is inhabitable.

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.

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

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.

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.

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

For better or worse, man is the tool-using animal, and as such he has become the lord of creation. When he is lord also of himself, he will deserve his self-chosen title homo sapiens.

Gambling is a disease of barbarians superficially civilized.

God does not always punish a nation by sending it adversity. More often He gives the oppressors their hearts' desire, and sends leanness withal into their soul.

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.

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.

I have no fear that the candle lighted in Palestine years ago will ever be put out.

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

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

In imperialism nothing fails like success. If the conqueror oppresses his subjects, they will become fanatical patriots, and sooner or later have their revenge; if he treats them well, and governs them for their good, they will multiply faster than their rulers, till they claim their independence.

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.

I think middle-age is the best time, if we can escape the fatty degeneration of the conscience which often sets in at about fifty.

It is becoming impossible for those who mix at all with their fellow-men to believe that the grace of God is distributed denominationally.

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.

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

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

Let none of us delude himself by supposing that honesty is always the best policy. It is not.

Let us remember, when we are inclined to be disheartened, that the private soldier is a poor judge of the fortunes of a great battle.

Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.

Love remembered and consecrated by grief belongs, more clearly than the happy intercourse of friends, to the eternal world; it has proved itself stronger than death.

Lutheranism is essentially German... It worships a God who is neither just nor merciful.

Man will never be entirely willing to give up this world for the next nor the next world for this.