James Anthony Froude Quotes

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

Men think to mend their condition by a change of circumstances. They might as well hope to escape from their shadows.

The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the marvel of human society.

Who shall say that those poor peasants were not acting in the spirit we most venerate, most adore; that theirs was not the true heart language which we cannot choose but love? And what has been their reward? They have sent down their name to be the by-word of all after ages; the worst reproach of the worst men a name convertible with atheism and devil-worship.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

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.

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.

Morality, when vigorously alive, sees farther than intellect, and provides unconsciously for intellectual difficulties.

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.

As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our abilities.

I cut a hole in my heart and wrote with the blood.

Men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal.