James Anthony Froude Quotes

James Anthony Froude shares thoughtful musings on morality, life and truth that appeal to readers seeking gentle philosophical insight.

18 quotes

1. I would not so dishonour God as to lend my voice to perpetuate all the mad and foolish things which men have dared to say of Him. I believe that we may find in the Bible the highest and purest religion most of all in the history of Him in whose name we all are called. His religion - not the Christian religion, but the religion of Christ - the poor man's gospel; the message of forgiveness, of reconciliation, of love; and, oh, how gladly would I spend my life, in season and out of season, in preaching this! But I must have no hell terrors, none of these fear doctrines; they were not in the early creeds, God knows whether they were ever in the early gospels, or ever passed His lips. He went down to hell, but it was to break the chains, not to bind them.

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

3. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last.

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

5. We seem to be in companionship with a spirit who is transfusing himself into our souls, and so vitalising them by his superior energy, that life, both outward and inward, presents itself to us in higher relief, in colours brightened and deepened.

6. After my death I wish no other herald, no other speaker of my living actions, to keep my honour from corruption, but such an honest chronicler as Froude.

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

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

9. Mistakes are often the best teachers.

10. 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.

11. Look not to have your sepulchre built in after ages hy the same foolish hands which still ever destroy the living prophet. Small honour for you if they do build it; and may be they never will build it.

12. 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.

13. 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.

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

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. Human improvement is from within outward.