William Temple Quotes

William Temple writes grand, witty thoughts on books, life's restless child-like nature and surprising historic events.

15 quotes

1. 'Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.

2. When all is done, human life is, at the greatest, and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.

3. No clap of thunder in a fair frosty day could astonish the world more than [England's] declaration of war against Holland in 1672.

4. Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself at all.

5. Our present time is indeed a criticizing and critical time, hovering between the wish, and the inability to believe. Our complaints are like arrows shot up into the air at no target: and with no purpose they only fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves.

6. There is no structural organization of society which can bring about the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth since all systems can be perverted by the selfishness of man. The Malvern Manifesto: Drawn up by a Conference of the Province of York, January 10, 1941; signed for the Conference by Temple, then Archbishop of York .

7. Christianity founds hospitals and atheists are cured in them, never knowing they owe their cure to Christ.

8. The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor.

9. Learning passes for wisdom among those who want both.

10. A man's wisdom is his best friend; folly, his worst enemy.

11. The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit.

12. We shall say without hesitation that the atheist who is moved by love is moved by the Spirit of God; an atheist who lives by love is saved by his faith in the God whose existence (under that name) he denies.

13. There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others.

14. People that trust wholly to other's charity, and without industry of their own, will always be poor.

15. Science has its being in a perpetual mental restlessness.