Explore Quotes by James Anthony Froude

Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws, so far as we can read them.

Ignorance is the dominion of absurdity.

The first duty of an historian is to be on his guard against his own sympathies...

We must have the real thing before we can have a science of a thing.

The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.

Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; [but] a creed is always sensitive.

English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.

Fear is the parent of cruelty.

Nature is not a partisan, but out of her ample treasue house she produces children in infinite variety, of which she is equally the mother, and disowns none of them.

No person is ever good for much, that hasn't been swept off their feet by enthusiasm between ages twenty and thirty

But the world was also so constructed, owing to the nature of the Maker of it, that superior strength was found in the long run to lie with those who had the right on their side.

In everyday things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty.

We enter the world alone, we leave it alone.

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

We live merely on the crust or rind of things.

Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.

Instruction does not prevent wasted time or mistakes; and mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all.

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

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

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

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.