Best 102 quotes of James Anthony Froude on MyQuotes

Now, to a single-minded man, who is either brave enough or reckless enough to surrender himself wholly to one idea, and look neither right nor left, but only forward, what earthly consequences may follow is not material. Persecution strengthens him; and so he is sure he is right, whether his course end in a prison or on a throne is no matter at all. But men of this calibre are uncommon in any age or in any country very uncommon in this age and this country.

Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in the world, insincerity is the most dangerous.

Once, once for all, if you would save your heart from breaking, learn this lesson once for all you must cease, in this world, to believe in the eternity of any creed or form at all. Whatever grows in time is a child of time, and is born and lives, and dies at its appointed day like ourselves.

Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws, so far as we can read them.

Our thoughts and our conduct are our own.

Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.

Sacrifice is the first element of religion, and resolves itself in theological language into the love of God.

Scepticism, like wisdom, springs out in full panoply only from the brain of a god, and it is little profit to see an idea in its growth, unless we track its seed to the power which sowed it.

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

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.

That which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a low order of man, that which constitutes human goodness, human nobleness, is surely not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantage; but it is self-forgetfulness; it is self-sacrifice; it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantage, remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more right.

The best that we can do for one another is to exchange our thoughts freely; and that, after all, is about all.

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

The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the marvel of human society.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

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.

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.

The moral system of the universe is like a document written in alternate ciphers, which change from line to line.

The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.

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.

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.

There are at bottom but two possible religions--that which rises in the moral nature of man, and which takes shape in moral commandments, and that which grows out of the observation of the material energies which operate in the external universe.

There are epidemics of nobleness as well as epidemics of disease.

The secret of a person's nature lies in their religion and what they really believes about the world and their place in it.

The solitary side of our nature demands leisure for reflection upon subjects on which the dash and whirl of daily business, so long as its clouds rise thick about us, forbid the intellect to fasten itself.

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.

The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.

The trials of life will not wait for us. They come at their own time, not caring much to inquire how ready we may be to meet them.

The war of good and evil is mightiest in mightiest souls, and even in the darkest time the heart will maintain its right against the hardest creed.

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

Those who seek for something more than happiness in this world must not complain if happiness is not their portion.

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

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.

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.

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

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.

We are complex, and therefore, in our natural state, inconsistent, beings, and the opinion of this hour need not be the opinion of the next.

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing.

We enter the world alone, we leave it alone.

We must have the real thing before we can have a science of a thing.

We read the past by the light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows fall, or as the point of vision alters.

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.

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.

When a woman's heart is flowing over for the first time with deep and passionate love, she is all love. Every faculty of her soul rushes together in the intensity of the one feeling; thought, reflection, conscience, duty, the past, the future, they are names to her light as the breath which speaks them; her soul is full.

Where all are selfish, the sage is no better than the fool, and only rather more dangerous.

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

Who shall say that those poor peasants were not acting in the spirit we most venerate, most adore; that theirs was not the true heart language which we cannot choose but love? And what has been their reward? They have sent down their name to be the by-word of all after ages; the worst reproach of the worst men a name convertible with atheism and devil-worship.

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

Woe to the unlucky man who as a child is taught, even as a portion of his creed, what his grown reason must forswear.

Women's eyes are rapid in detecting a heart which is ill at ease with itself, and, knowing the value of sympathy, and finding their own greatest happiness not in receiving it, but in giving it, with them to be unhappy is at once to be interesting.