J. A. 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.

Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.

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.

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.

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.

Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity.

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

A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.

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

Fear is the parent of cruelty.

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

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

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

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

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

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing.

Experience is no more transferable in morals than in art.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Justice without wisdom is impossible.

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

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

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

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

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.

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