James Anthony Froude
James Anthony Froude
James Anthony Froude FRSEwas an English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine. From his upbringing amidst the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement, Froude intended to become a clergyman, but doubts about the doctrines of the Anglican church, published in his scandalous 1849 novel The Nemesis of Faith, drove him to abandon his religious career. Froude turned to writing history, becoming one of the best known historians of his time for his History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth23 April 1818
James Anthony Froude quotes about
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.
I cut a hole in my heart and wrote with the blood .
I scarcely know a professional man I can like, and certainly not one who has been what the world calls successful, that I should the least wish to resemble.
I would sooner perish for ever than stoop down before a Being who may have power to crush me, but whom my heart forbids me to reverence.
Life is change, to cease to change is to cease to live; yet if you may shed a tear beside the death-bed of an old friend, let not your heart be silent on the dissolving of a faith.
Do you not think that sometimes when matters are at the worst with us, when we appear to have done all which we ourselves can do, yet all has been unavailing, and we have only shown we cannot, not we will not, help ourselves; that often just then something comes, almost as if supernaturally, to settle for us, as if our guardian angel took pity on our perplexities, and then at last obtained leave to help us? And if it be so, then what might only be a coincidence becomes a call of Providence, a voice from Heaven, a command.
Life is more than a theory, and love of truth butters no bread: old men who have had to struggle along their way, who know the endless bitterness, the grave moral deterioration which follow an empty exchequer, may well be pardoned for an over-wish to see their sons secured from it; hunger, at least, is a reality...
I believe that fallen creatures perish, perish for ever, for only good can live, and good has not been theirs; but how durst men forge our Saviour's words "eternal death " into so horrible a meaning? And even if he did use other words, and seem to countenance such a meaning for them (and what witness have we that He did, except that of men whose ignorance or prejudice might well have interpreted these words wrongly as they did so many others?
Man is a real man, and can live and act manfully in this world, not in the strength of opinions, not according to what he thinks, but according to what he is .
Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.
We live merely on the crust or rind of things.
We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone.
In everyday things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty.
Superior strength is found in the long run to lie with those who had right on their side.