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James Anthony Froude

99 quotes

“I cut a hole in my heart and wrote with the blood.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the writing of his novel The Nemesis of Faith (1849), in a letter to Charles Kingsley (New Year's Day 1849), as quoted in Rosemary Ashton, Doubting Clerics: From James Anthony Froude to Robert Elsmere via George Elio…
“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.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface, Second edition (21 June 1849), added in response to some controversies and rumors caused by the publication of the first edition of his novel. There were no changes made in the text of the novel itself.
“I am convinced with Plato, with St. Paul, with St. Augustine, with Calvin, and with Leibnitz, that this universe, and every smallest portion of it, exactly fulfils the purpose for which Almighty God designed it.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface, Second edition (21 June 1849)
“Man is a real man, and can live and act manfully in this world, not in the strength of opinions, not according to what he thinks, but according to what he is.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface, Second edition (21 June 1849)
“I do not dishonour the Bible. I honour it above all books. The New Testament alone, since I have been able to read it humanly, has to me outweighed all the literature of the world. It is because we dishonour it by making it an idol, and destroy its power by the foolish means with which we think to enhance it, that I have said what I have felt it my duty to say.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface, Second edition (21 June 1849)
“I have nothing but myself to write about, no facts, no theories, no opinions, no adventures, no sentiments, nothing but my own poor barren individualism, of considerable interest to me, but I do not know why I should presume it will be so to you. Egotism is not tiresome, or it ought not to be, if one is sincere about oneself; but it is so hard to be sincere. Well, never mind, I mean to be, and you know me well enough to see through me when I am humbugging.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Markham Sutherland to Arthur "Letter I : Huntley Parsonage, September 4, 1843
“I scarcely know a professional man I can like, and certainly not one who has been what the world calls successful, that I should the least wish to resemble.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I cannot think the disputes and jealousies of Heaven are tried and settled by the swords of earth.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It may be from some moral obliquity in myself, or from some strange disease; but for me, and I should think too for every human being in whose breast a human heart is beating, to know that one single creature is in that dreadful place would make a hell of heaven itself. And they have hearts in heaven, for they love there.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe that fallen creatures perish, perish for ever, for only good can live, and good has not been theirs; but how durst men forge our Saviour's words "eternal death" into so horrible a meaning? And even if he did use other words, and seem to countenance such a meaning for them (and what witness have we that He did, except that of men whose ignorance or prejudice might well have interpreted these words wrongly as they did so many others?)”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I could never fear a God who kept a hell prison-house. No, not though he flung me there because I refused. There is a power stronger than such a one; and it is possible to walk unscathed even in the burning furnace.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Show me if I am wrong. It is easy to be mistaken. But do not tell me it is wicked of me to have thought all this, for it is not — I am certain it is not.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The evidence of religion — ah, I know where the true evidence lies, by the pleadings of my own heart against me. Why, why must it be that all these alien histories, these strange theories and doctrines, should be all sown in together in the child seed-bed with the pure grain of Christianity? so that in after years it is impossible to root them out without trampling over rudely on the good. And we must do it. They may be harmless, growing there unrecognised; but, known for what they are, their poison opens then, and they or we must die.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who shall say that those poor peasants were not acting in the spirit we most venerate, most adore; that theirs was not the true heart language which we cannot choose but love? And what has been their reward? They have sent down their name to be the by-word of all after ages; the worst reproach of the worst men — a name convertible with atheism and devil-worship.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Once, once for all, if you would save your heart from breaking, learn this lesson — once for all you must cease, in this world, to believe in the eternity of any creed or form at all. Whatever grows in time is a child of time, and is born and lives, and dies at its appointed day like ourselves.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is change, to cease to change is to cease to live; yet if you may shed a tear beside the death-bed of an old friend, let not your heart be silent on the dissolving of a faith.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Carlyle! Carlyle only raises questions he cannot answer, and seems best contented if he can make the rest of us as discontented as himself; and all the others, all, that is, who have any power at all, fight beside religion, either as if it were not worth saving, or as if it had nothing to do with them.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you not think that sometimes when matters are at the worst with us, when we appear to have done all which we ourselves can do, yet all has been unavailing, and we have only shown we cannot, not we will not, help ourselves; that often just then something comes, almost as if supernaturally, to settle for us, as if our guardian angel took pity on our perplexities, and then at last obtained leave to help us? And if it be so, then what might only be a coincidence becomes a call of Providence, a voice from Heaven, a command.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is more than a theory, and love of truth butters no bread: old men who have had to struggle along their way, who know the endless bitterness, the grave moral deterioration which follow an empty exchequer, may well be pardoned for an over-wish to see their sons secured from it; hunger, at least, is a reality...”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe in God, not because the Bible tells me that he is, but because my heart tells me so; and the same heart tells me we can only have His peace with us if we love Him and obey Him, and that we can only he happy when we each love our neighbour better than ourselves.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The men that write books, Carlyle says, are now the world's priests, the spiritual directors of mankind.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I suppose, at the smallest average, for the making of a single rich man, we make a thousand whose life-long is one flood-tide of misery. The charnel-houses of poverty are in the shadow of the palace; and as one is splendid, so is the other dark, poisonous, degraded. How can a man grow rich, except on the spoils of others' labour? His boasted prudence and economy, what is it but the most skilfully availing himself of their necessities, most resolutely closing up his heart against their cries to him for help?”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be enthusiastic about doing much with human nature is a foolish business indeed; and, throwing himself into his work as he was doing, and expecting so much from it, would not the tide ebb as strongly as it was flowing? It is a rash game this setting our hearts on any future beyond what we have our own selves control over. Things do not walk as we settle with ourselves they ought to walk, and to hope is almost the correlative of to be disappointed.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think there is a spiritual scent in us which feels mischief coming, as they say birds scent storms.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Charity is from person to person; and it loses half, far more than half, its moral value when the giver is not brought into personal relation with those to whom he gives.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That in these times every serious person should not in his heart have felt some difliculty with the doctrines of the incarnation, I cannot helieve. We are not as we were. When Christianity was first published, the imagination of mankind presented the relation of heaven to earth very differently from what it does now.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think Nature, if she interests herself much about her children, must often feel that, like the miserable Frankenstein, with her experimenting among the elements of humanity, she has brought beings into existence who have no business here; who can do none of her work, and endure none of her favours; whose life is only suffering; and whose action is one long protest against the ill foresight which flung them into consciousness.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You cannot reason people into loving those whom they are not drawn to love; they cannot reason themselves into it; and there are some contrarieties of temper which are too strong even for the obligations of relationship.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scepticism, like wisdom, springs out in full panoply only from the brain of a god, and it is little profit to see an idea in its growth, unless we track its seed to the power which sowed it.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We call heaven our home, as the best name we know to give it.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You will never have perfect men, Plato says, till you have perfect circumstances. Perhaps a true saying! — but, till the philosopher is born who can tell us what circumstances are perfect, a sufficiently speculative one. At any rate, one finds strange enough results — often the very best coming up out of conditions the most unpromising. Such a bundle of odd contradictions we human beings are, that perhaps full as many repellent as attracting influences are acquired, before we can give our hearts to what is right.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Woe to the unlucky man who as a child is taught, even as a portion of his creed, what his grown reason must forswear.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is right or duty without power? To tell a man it is his duty to submit his judgment to the judgment of the church, is like telling a wife it is her duty to love her husband — a thing easy to say, but meaning simply nothing. Affection must be won, not commanded.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Minds vary in sensitiveness and in self-power, as bodies do in susceptibility of attraction and repulsion. When, when shall we learn that they are governed by laws as inexorable as physical laws, and that a man can as easily refuse to obey what has power over him as a steel atom can resist the magnet?”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fling away your soul once for all, your own small self; if you will find it again. Count not even on immortality.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was brought home to me that two men may be as sincere, as earnest, as faithful, as uncompromising, and yet hold opinions far asunder as the poles. I have before said that I think the moment of this conviction is the most perilous crisis of our lives; for myself, it threw me at once on my own responsibility, and obliged me to look for myself at what men said, instead of simply accepting all because they said it. I begin to look about me to listen to what had to be said on many sides of the question, and try, as far as I could, to give it all fair hearing.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For me this world was neither so high nor so low as the Church would have it; chequered over with its wild light shadows, I could love it and all the children of it, more dearly, perhaps, because it was not all light.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A dreamer he was, and ever would be. Yet dreaming need not injure us, if it do but take its turn with waking; and even dreams themselves may be turned to beauty, by favoured men to whom nature has given the powers of casting them into form.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Women's eyes are rapid in detecting a heart which is ill at ease with itself, and, knowing the value of sympathy, and finding their own greatest happiness not in receiving it, but in giving it, with them to be unhappy is at once to be interesting.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She would gladly have been more to him than she could be — because she felt (she did not deny it to herself) that she would sooner have been his wife than Leonard's. But why, because they could not be all to one another, must they be as nothing?”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is ill changing the creed to meet each rising temptation. The soul is truer than it seems, and refuses to be trifled with.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our characters change as world eras change, as our features change, slowly from day to day. Nothing is sudden in this world. Inch hy inch; drop by drop; line by line. Even when great convulsions shatter down whole nations, cities, monarchies, systems, human fortunes, still they are but the finish, the last act of the same long preparing, slowly devouring change, in which the tide of human affairs for ever ebbs and flows, without haste, and without rest.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How true it is that arguments have only power over us while the temper is disposed to listen to them!”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source