James Anthony Froude Quotes

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.

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

We enter the world alone, we leave it alone.

Human improvement is from within outward.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our abilities.

Carelessness is inexcusable, and merits the inevitable sequence.

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

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

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.

Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.

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.

History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

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

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.

Mistakes are often the best teachers.

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

Nature is not a partisan, but out of her ample treasue house she produces children in infinite variety, of which she is equally the mother, and disowns none of them.

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

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

Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity.

Fear is the parent of cruelty.

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

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

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Justice without wisdom is impossible.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.

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

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.

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.

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

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.