John Morley (1838–1923) was an English journalist, biographer, philosophical critic, and political leader. He was one of the foremost Victorian expounders of the ideas of the English Enlightenment.
Born in Blackburn, Lancashire, the son of a doctor, and educated at Cheltenham and Lincoln colleges in Oxford, Morley began his literary career as a journalist, writing chiefly for the Fortnightly Review. He edited Fortnightly Review 1867–82 and Pall Mall Gazette 1881–83, served as a Liberal Member of Parliament 1883–1908 and became the 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn in 1908.
Morley was a prolific writer on historical, biographical, social topics. His biographical works include Edmund Burke: An Historical Study (1867,) Voltaire (1872,) Rousseau (1873,) On Compromise (1874,) Burke (1879,) The Life of Richard Cobden (1881,) Oliver Cromwell (1900,) and Life of Gladstone (4 vols., 1903.) He edited the popular “English Men of Letters” series.
Morley was also the chief secretary for Ireland 1886, 1892–95 and secretary of state for India 1905–10. From 1910, he was lord president of the council but resigned at the outbreak of war.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
In parliament he again pressed the necessity of reducing expenditure. Friends warned him that he was flogging a dead horse.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Government
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Books, Reading
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
A proverb is good sense brought to a point.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Proverbial Wisdom, Proverbs
He who hates vice hates men.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Virtue, Vice
Society can only pursue its normal course by means of a certain progression of changes.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Change
Books worth reading once are worth reading twice; and what is most important of all, the masterpieces of literature are worth reading a thousand times.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Reading
You will find most books worth reading are worth reading twice.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Simplicity of character is no hindrance to subtlety of intellect.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Time Management, Value of a Day, Simplicity, Intelligence
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Duty
Nature, in her most dazzling aspects or stupendous parts, is but the background and theater of the tragedy of man.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Nature
They are the guiding oracles which man has found out for himself in that great business of ours, of learning how to be, to do, to do without, and to depart.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Simplicity, Value of Time, Aspirations, Business, Life, Time Management, Simple Living, Goals, Proverbial Wisdom
All religions die of one disease, that of being found out.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Religion
They act as if they supposed that to be very sanguine about the general improvement of mankind is a virtue that relieves them from taking trouble about any improvement in particular.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Apathy
The essence of a quote is the compression of a mass of thought and observation into a single saying.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Quotations
In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Politicians, Politics
The proper memory for a politician is one that knows what to remember and what to forget.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Politics
Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Literature
Many people think of knowledge as money, They would like knowledge, but do not want to face the perseverance and self-denial that goes into the acquisition of it.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Knowledge
The best guarantee for justice in public dealings is the participation in their own government of the people most likely to suffer from injustice.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Justice
The essence of morality is the subjugation of nature in obedience to social needs.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Morals
You cannot demonstrate an emotion or prove an aspiration.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Aspirations, One liners
Evolution is not a force but a process. Not a cause but a law.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Evolution
Three things matter in a speech – who says it, how he says it and what he says, and of the three, the latter matters the least
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Speech
Maxims and aphorisms, let us remember that wisdom is the true salt of literature, and the books that are most nourishing are richly stored with it, and that is the main object to seek in reading books.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Proverbs, Proverbial Wisdom
No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Awareness, Expectations, Realistic Expectations, Realization, Acceptance, Character
Even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in the broad, intelligent, and spacious way.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Topics: Opinion, Opinions
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