James Anthony Froude Quotes

We live merely on the crust or rind of things.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

In every department of life--in its business and in its pleasures, in its beliefs and in its theories, in its material developments and in its spiritual connections--we thank God that we are not like our fathers.

Men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal.

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.

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Justice without wisdom is impossible.

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

I cannot think the disputes and jealousies of Heaven are tried and settled by the swords of earth.

Morality, when vigorously alive, sees farther than intellect, and provides unconsciously for intellectual difficulties.

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.

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.

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

Carelessness is inexcusable, and merits the inevitable sequence.

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 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.

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.

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

The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.

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

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

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

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.

Human improvement is from within outward.

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

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.

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.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

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

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.

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

Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity.

Beautiful is old age—beautiful as the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorious summer. In the old man, Nature has fulfilled her work; she loads him with blessings; she fills him with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by his children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to a grave, to which he is followed with blessings. God forbid we should not call it beautiful.

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

The first duty of an historian is to be on his guard against his own sympathies...