James Anthony Froude Quotes

“A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.”

“Facts can only be accurately determined by us through persistent observation and persistent and critical skepticism.”

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

“It often seems to me as if History was like a child's box of letters, with which we can spell any word we please. We have only to pick out such letters as we want, arrange them as we like, and say nothing about those which do not suit our purpose.”

“It remains a lesson to all time, that goodness, though the indispensable adjunct to knowledge, is no substitute for it; that when conscience undertakes to dictate beyond its province, the result is only the more monstrous.”

“Justice without wisdom is impossible.”

“Mistakes are often the best teachers.”

“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.”

“Tell me when I am wrong. It is easy to make a mistake. But don't tell me it is bad of me to have thought this, because I know for sure that it is not.”

“The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.”

“Those who seek for something more than happiness in this world must not complain if happiness is not their portion.”

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

“To deny free will is to make morality impossible.”

“Political convulsions work in a groove, the direction of which varies little in any age or country. Institutions once sufficient and salutary become unadapted to a change of circumstances. The traditionary holders of power see their interests threatened. They are jealous of innovations. They look on agitators for reform as felonious persons desiring to appropriate what does not belong to them.

The complaining parties are conscious of suffering and rush blindly on the superficial causes of their immediate distress. The existing authority is their enemy; and their one remedy is a change in the system of government. They imagine that they see what the change should be, that they comprehend what they are doing, and know where they intend to arrive. They do not perceive that the visible disorders are no more than symptoms which no measures, repressive or revolutionary, can do more than palliate.

The wave advances and the wave recedes. Neither party in the struggle can lift itself far enough above the passions of the moment to study the drift of the general current. Each is violent, each is one-sided, and each makes the most and the worst of the sins of its opponents. The one idea of the aggressors is to grasp all that they can reach.

The one idea of the conservatives is to part with nothing, pretending that the stability of the State depends on adherence to the principles which have placed them in the position which they hold; and as various interests are threatened, and as various necessities arise, those who are one day enemies are frightened the next into unnatural coalitions, and the next after into more embittered dissensions.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Every one of us knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.”

“Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.”

“Fear is the parent of cruelty.”

“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.”

“Human improvement is from within outward.”

“Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity.”

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

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

“Men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal.”

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

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