54 Quotes by William Temple

Authority is by nothing so much strengthened and confirmed as by custom; for no man easily distrusts the things which he and all men have been always bred up to.

No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.

You may keep your beauty and your health, unless you destroy them yourself, or discourage them to stay with you, by using them ill.

When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.

Learning passes for wisdom among those who want both.

We shall say without hesitation that the atheist who is moved by love is moved by the Spirit of God; an atheist who lives by love is saved by his faith in the God whose existence (under that name) he denies.

Some of the Fathers went so far as to esteem the love of music a sign of predestination, as a thing divine, and reserved for the felicities of heaven itself.

The greatest pleasure in life is love.

There is no structural organization of society which can bring about the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth since all systems can be perverted by the selfishness of man. The Malvern Manifesto: Drawn up by a Conference of the Province of York, January 10, 1941; signed for the Conference by Temple, then Archbishop of York .