127 Quotes by James Anthony Froude

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.