Quote

Minds vary in sensitiveness and in self-power, as bodies do in susceptibility of attraction and repulsion. When, when shall we learn that they are governed by laws as inexorable as physical laws, and that a man can as easily refuse to obey what has power over him as a steel atom can resist the magnet?

James Anthony Froude

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James Anthony Froude
Age: 75 †
Born: 1818
Born: April 23
Died: 1894
Died: January 1
Biographer
Deacon
Essayist
Historian
Novelist
Translator
University Teacher
Dartington
Devon
Learn
Bodies
Atom
Power
Refuse
Vary
Body
Easily
Governed
Self
Minds
Obey
Sensitiveness
Mind
Laws
Atoms
Repulsion
Men
Physical
Resist
Susceptibility
Shall
Steel
Inexorable
Law
Attraction
Magnet

More quotes by James Anthony Froude

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When a woman's heart is flowing over for the first time with deep and passionate love, she is all love. Every faculty of her soul rushes together in the intensity of the one feeling thought, reflection, conscience, duty, the past, the future, they are names to her light as the breath which speaks them her soul is full.
James Anthony Froude
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Life is change, to cease to change is to cease to live yet if you may shed a tear beside the death-bed of an old friend, let not your heart be silent on the dissolving of a faith.
James Anthony Froude
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The moral of human life is never simple, and the moral of a story which aims only at being true to human life cannot be expected to be any more so.
James Anthony Froude
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Life is more than a theory, and love of truth butters no bread: old men who have had to struggle along their way, who know the endless bitterness, the grave moral deterioration which follow an empty exchequer, may well be pardoned for an over-wish to see their sons secured from it hunger, at least, is a reality.
James Anthony Froude
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The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the marvel of human society.
James Anthony Froude
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The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.
James Anthony Froude
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The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness. Where we find a heroic life appearing as the uniform fruit of a particular mode of opinion, it is childish to argue in the face of fact that the result ought to have been different.
James Anthony Froude
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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.
James Anthony Froude
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You cannot reason people into loving those whom they are not drawn to love they cannot reason themselves into it and there are some contrarieties of temper which are too strong even for the obligations of relationship.
James Anthony Froude
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A single seed of fact will produce in a season or two a harvest of calumnies but sensible men will pay no attention to them.
James Anthony Froude
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I cannot think the disputes and jealousies of Heaven are tried and settled by the swords of earth.
James Anthony Froude
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Where all are selfish, the sage is no better than the fool, and only rather more dangerous.
James Anthony Froude
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Morality rests upon a sense of obligation and obligation has no meaning except as implying a Divine command, without which it would cease to be.
James Anthony Froude
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Courage is, on all hands, considered as an essential of high character.
James Anthony Froude
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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.
James Anthony Froude
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The best that we can do for one another is to exchange our thoughts freely and that, after all, is about all.
James Anthony Froude
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What is called virtue in the common sense of the word has nothing to do with this or that man's prosperity, or even happiness.
James Anthony Froude
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The solitary side of our nature demands leisure for reflection upon subjects on which the dash and whirl of daily business, so long as its clouds rise thick about us, forbid the intellect to fasten itself.
James Anthony Froude
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Men think to mend their condition by a change of circumstances. They might as well hope to escape from their shadows.
James Anthony Froude
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True greatness is the most ready to recognize and most willing to obey those simple outward laws which have been sanctioned by the experience of mankind.
James Anthony Froude