James Anthony Froude Quotes

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It is strange, when something rises before us as a possibility which we have hitherto believed to be very dreadful, we fancy it is a great crisis; that when we pass it we shall be different beings; some mighty change will have swept over our nature, and we shall lose entirely all our old selves, and become others. … Yet, when the thing, whether good or evil, is done, we find we were mistaken; we are seemingly much the same — neither much better nor worse; and then we cannot make it out; on either side there is a weakening of faith; we fancy we have been taken in; the mountain has heen in lahour, and we are perplexed to find the good less powerful than we expected, and the evil less evil.

James Anthony Froude
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.

James Anthony Froude
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.

James Anthony Froude
Life is change, to cease to change is to cease to live; yet if you may shed a tear beside the death-bed of an old friend, let not your heart be silent on the dissolving of a faith.

James Anthony Froude
You will never have perfect men, Plato says, till you have perfect circumstances. Perhaps a true saying! — but, till the philosopher is born who can tell us what circumstances are perfect, a sufficiently speculative one. At any rate, one finds strange enough results — often the very best coming up out of conditions the most unpromising. Such a bundle of odd contradictions we human beings are, that perhaps full as many repellent as attracting influences are acquired, before we can give our hearts to what is right.

James Anthony Froude
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.

James Anthony Froude
We may make our own opinions, but facts were made for us; and, if we evade or deny them, it will be the worse for us.

James Anthony Froude
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.

James Anthony Froude
How true it is that arguments have only power over us while the temper is disposed to listen to them!

James Anthony Froude
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.

James Anthony Froude
I cut a hole in my heart and wrote with the blood.

James Anthony Froude
I do not dishonour the Bible. I honour it above all books. The New Testament alone, since I have been able to read it humanly, has to me outweighed all the literature of the world. It is because we dishonour it by making it an idol, and destroy its power by the foolish means with which we think to enhance it, that I have said what I have felt it my duty to say.

James Anthony Froude
Fling away your soul once for all, your own small self; if you will find it again. Count not even on immortality.

James Anthony Froude
The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.

James Anthony Froude
The men that write books, Carlyle says, are now the world's priests, the spiritual directors of mankind.

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

James Anthony Froude
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.

James Anthony Froude
You cannot reason people into loving those whom they are not drawn to love; they cannot reason themselves into it; and there are some contrarieties of temper which are too strong even for the obligations of relationship.

James Anthony Froude
I believe that fallen creatures perish, perish for ever, for only good can live, and good has not been theirs; but how durst men forge our Saviour's words "eternal death" into so horrible a meaning? And even if he did use other words, and seem to countenance such a meaning for them (and what witness have we that He did, except that of men whose ignorance or prejudice might well have interpreted these words wrongly as they did so many others?)

James Anthony Froude
Charity is from person to person; and it loses half, far more than half, its moral value when the giver is not brought into personal relation with those to whom he gives.

James Anthony Froude
There is always a part of our being into which those who are dearer to us far than our own lives are yet unable to enter.

James Anthony Froude
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.

James Anthony Froude
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.

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

James Anthony Froude
Just laws are no restraint upon the freedom of the good, for the good man desires nothing which a just law will interfere with.

James Anthony Froude
Courage is, on all hands, considered as an essential of high character.

James Anthony Froude
No vehement error can exist in this world with impunity...

James Anthony Froude
The secrets of nature have been opened out to us on a thousand lines; and men of science of all creeds can pursue side by side their common investigations.

James Anthony Froude
Crime is not punished as an offense against God, but as prejudicial to society.

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

James Anthony Froude