Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Philosophy, Philosophers
Crime is not punished as an offence against God, but as prejudicial to society.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Crime
The Bible, thoroughly known, is literature in itself—the rarest and richest in all departments of thought and imagination which exists.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Bible
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. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Opinions, Opinion, History
No person is ever good for much, that hasn’t been swept off their feet by enthusiasm between ages twenty and thirty.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Enthusiasm
Our human laws are more or less imperfect copies of the external laws as we see them.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Lawyers, Law
Literature happens to be the only occupation in which wages are not given in proportion to the goodness of the work done.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Literature
Justice without wisdom is impossible.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Justice
Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; but a belief is always sensitive.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Scientists, Science
The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Greatness
Morality, when vigorously alive, sees farther than intellect, and provides unconsciously for intellectual difficulties.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Morality
Half the vices in the world rise out of cowardice, and one who is afraid of lying is usually afraid of nothing else.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Lying
To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not only difficult, but is impossible. Even what is passing in our presence we see but through a glass darkly. In historical inquiries the most instructed thinkers have but a limited advantage over the most illiterate. Those who know the most approach least to agreement.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: History
The first duty of an historian is to be on guard against his own sympathies.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Historians, History
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Inaction, Self-Discovery, Procrastination, Dreams, Getting Going, Character, Attitude
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.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Selfishness
Human improvement is from within outward.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Character
Toleration is a good thing in its place; but you cannot tolerate what will not tolerate you, and is trying to cut your throat.
—James Anthony Froude
There is nothing certain except the unforeseen.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Certainty, Foresight
Superior strength is found in the long run to lie with those who had right on their side.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Strength
To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Willpower, Will Power, Will
A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Reason
The Providence that watches over the affairs of men, works out their mistakes, at times, to a healthier issue than could have been accomplished by their wisest forethought.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Mistake
Where all are selfish, the sage is no better than the fool, and only rather more dangerous.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Selfishness
The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Morals, Morality
That which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a lower, and which constitutes human goodness and nobleness, is self-forgetfulness, self-sacrifice, the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantage, remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more right.
—James Anthony Froude
Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Ignorance
We take rank by descent. Such of us as have the longest pedigree, and are therefore the furthest removed from the first who made the fortune and founded the family, we are the noblest.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Ancestry
But not long; for in the tedious minutes’ exquisite interval—I’m on the rack; for sure the greatest evil man can know bears no proportion to this dread suspense.
—James Anthony Froude
In common things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Sacrifice, Duty
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- C. Northcote Parkinson British Historian
- Arnold J. Toynbee British Historian
- Edward Gibbon English Historian
- Winston Churchill British Head of State
- Gladys Bronwyn Stern British Writer
- Plutarch Greek Biographer
- David McCullough American Historian
- V. S. Pritchett British Short Story Writer
- Samuel Johnson British Essayist
- Lytton Strachey British Biographer
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