James Anthony Froude (1818–94) was a prolific Victorian novelist, historian, and biographer. His literary accomplishment is remarkable for not only its variety and its originality, but also for the controversy it generated.
Froude’s autobiographical melodramatic novel The Nemesis of Faith (1849) described the reasons for and the outcomes of a young priest’s crisis of faith. The book created a furor and was publicly burned. Froude was disgraced and resigned from his Oxford fellowship. (Forty-three years later, he returned to Oxford as a distinguished professor of modern history, and held this position until death.)
After resigning from Oxford, Froude took up historical writing and published History of England (12 vols., 1856–70.) This book was well-liked for its research and spirited narrative but attracted controversy for its Protestant interpretation of historical events. Froude also wrote biographies of Benjamin Disraeli, Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Luther, Julius Caesar, John Bunyan, Thomas Becket, Robert Burns, Francis Bacon, Henry VIII, and numerous other historical figures.
Froude is best known as the literary executor and biographer of his mentor, the historian Thomas Carlyle, as well as Carlyle’s wife, Jane Welsh. Froude’s biography of Thomas Carlyle is considered one of the most excellent examples of English literary biography. Froude’s publication of Welsh’s letters attracted debate for alluding to the less-pleasant aspects of her marriage to Carlyle. Froude also contended that Jane had given up her literary talents and ambitions in favor of her husband’s career. Though Froude claimed that a sincere biographer must fully explore a subject’s defects of character, his critics interpreted his frankness as a betrayal of Carlyle’s memory.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by James Anthony Froude
Superior strength is found in the long run to lie with those who had right on their side.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Strength
Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws, so far as we can read them.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Law
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
As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Ability, One liners
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
The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Superstition
To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Will, Willpower, Will Power
When we would, with utmost detestation, single some monster from the traitor herd, ’tis but to say ingratitude is his crime.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Ingratitude
What is called virtue in the common sense of the word has nothing to do with this or that man’s prosperity, or even happiness.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Virtue
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.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Faith
The first duty of an historian is to be on guard against his own sympathies.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: History, Historians
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
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Attitude, Procrastination, Self-Discovery, Dreams, Getting Going, Character, Inaction
There is nothing certain except the unforeseen.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Certainty, Foresight
In common things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Duty, Sacrifice
Our human laws are more or less imperfect copies of the external laws as we see them.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Law, Lawyers
Experience teaches slowly and at the cost of mistakes.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Experience, Mistakes
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
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
A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Reason
The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Morality, Morals
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
Thirst of power and of riches now bear sway, the passion and infirmity of age.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Age
Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Ignorance
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: History, Opinions, Opinion
If we think of religion only as a means of escaping what we call the wrath to come, we shall not escape it; we are under the burden of death, if we care only for ourselves.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Religion
Human improvement is from within outward.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Character
Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; but a belief is always sensitive.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Science, Scientists
Crime is not punished as an offence against God, but as prejudicial to society.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Crime
Of all the evil spirits abroad in the world, insincerity is the most dangerous.
—James Anthony Froude
Topics: Deceit
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