James Anthony Froude Quotes

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.

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

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

Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.

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

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

Superior strength is found in the long run to lie with those who had right on their side.

It is ill changing the creed to meet each rising temptation. The soul is truer than it seems, and refuses to be trifled with.

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

We live merely on the crust or rind of things.

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

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Carelessness is inexcusable, and merits the inevitable sequence.

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

In everyday things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

To be happy is not the purpose for which you are placed in this world.

The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.

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

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

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

Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity.

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.

Mistakes are often the best teachers.

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

Human improvement is from within outward.

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

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Fear is the parent of cruelty.

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.

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

Justice without wisdom is impossible.

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

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

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

Our thoughts and our conduct are our own.

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

Instruction does not prevent wasted time or mistakes; and mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all.

Experience is no more transferable in morals than in art.

I think there is a spiritual scent in us which feels mischief coming, as they say birds scent storms.

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

Every one of us ... knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.

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.

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

No person is ever good for much, that hasn't been swept off their feet by enthusiasm between ages twenty and thirty.

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

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

We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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