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
I have long been convinced that the Christian Eucharist is but a continuation of the Eleusinian mysteries. St Paul, in using the word teleiois, almost confirms this.
We are complex, and therefore, in our natural state, inconsistent, beings, and the opinion of this hour need not be the opinion of the next.
High original genius is always ridiculed on its first appearance; most of all by those who have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the established lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it.
Men think to mend their condition by a change of circumstances. They might as well hope to escape from their shadows.
What is right or duty without power ? To tell a man it is his duty to submit his judgment to the judgment of the church, is like telling a wife it is her duty to love her husband a thing easy to say, but meaning simply nothing. Affection must be won, not commanded.
It may be from some moral obliquity in myself, or from some strange disease; but for me, and I should think too for every human being in whose breast a human heart is beating, to know that one single creature is in that dreadful place would make a hell of heaven itself. And they have hearts in heaven, for they love there.
The war of good and evil is mightiest in mightiest souls, and even in the darkest time the heart will maintain its right against the hardest creed.
Where all are selfish, the sage is no better than the fool, and only rather more dangerous.
Our thoughts and our conduct are our own.
Women's eyes are rapid in detecting a heart which is ill at ease with itself, and, knowing the value of sympathy, and finding their own greatest happiness not in receiving it, but in giving it, with them to be unhappy is at once to be interesting.
A dreamer he was, and ever would be. Yet dreaming need not injure us, if it do but take its turn with waking; and even dreams themselves may be turned to beauty, by favoured men to whom nature has given the powers of casting them into form.
The trials of life will not wait for us. They come at their own time, not caring much to inquire how ready we may be to meet them.
Woe to the unlucky man who as a child is taught, even as a portion of his creed, what his grown reason must forswear.
We call heaven our home, as the best name we know to give it.