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Human character is never found to enter into its glory, except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.

James Martineau

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James Martineau
Age: 94 †
Born: 1805
Born: April 21
Died: 1900
Died: January 11
Philosopher
Norwich
Norfolk
Without
Free
Enter
Never
Force
Resistance
Ordeal
Found
Forth
Ordeals
Cannot
Offer
Declare
Character
Offers
Grandeur
Human
Except
Affliction
Humans
Glory
Fierce
Come
Battle
Temptation

More quotes by James Martineau

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If it is permitted to the enlightened but baffled Statesman, when deserted and fallen from his place, to appeal from the voices of the moment to the judgment of more impartial times, with what right can we call in question the loftier form of the same prophetic trust which looks to a present God rather than to future men?
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I bow in reverence before the emotions of every melted heart....The more intense the delight in their presence, the more poignant the impression of their absence....When the tears of bereavement have had their natural flow, they lead us again to life and love's generous joy.
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God has so arranged the chronometry of our spirits, that there shall be thousands of silent moments between the striking hours.
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We should count time by heart-throbs.
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Grief is only the memory of widowed affection. The more intense the delight in the presence of the object, the more poignant must be the impression of the absence.
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High hearts are never long without hearing some new call, some distant clarion of God, even in their dreams and soon they are observed to break up the camp of ease, and start on some fresh march of faithful service.
James Martineau
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God is infinite and the laws of nature, like nature itself, are finite. These methods of working, therefore, - which correspond to the physical element in us, - do not exhaust His agency. There is a boundless residue of disengaged energy beyond.
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The heavens, with their everlasting faithfulness, look down on no sadder contradiction than the sluggard and the slattern in their prayers.
James Martineau
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Trust arises from the mind's instinctive feeling after fixed realities, after the substance of every shadow, the base of all appearance, the everlasting amid change.
James Martineau
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The incarnation is true, not of Christ exclusively, but of Man universally, and God everlastingly.
James Martineau
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Nothing less than the majesty of God, and the powers of the world to come, can maintain the peace and sanctity of our homes, the order and serenity of our minds, the spirit of patience and tender mercy in our hearts. Then will even the merest drudgery of duty cease to humble us, when we transfigure it by the glory of our own spirit.
James Martineau
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There is no human life so poor and small as not to hold many a divine possibility.
James Martineau
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We are each of us responsible for the evil we may have prevented.
James Martineau
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The scepticism which men affect towards their higher inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty negligence, and is a sign of narrow mind and defective wisdom.
James Martineau
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All beneficent and creative power gathers itself together in silence, ere it issues out in might.
James Martineau
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We can neither change nor overpower God's eternal suffrage against selfishness and meanness.
James Martineau
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There is no surer mark of a low and unregenerate nature than this tendency of power to loudness and wantonness instead of quietness and reverence. To souls baptized in Christian nobleness the largest sphere of command is but a wider empire of obedience, calling them, not to escape from holy rule, but to its full impersonation.
James Martineau
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Heaven and God are best discerned through tears scarcely perhaps are discerned at all without them. The constant association of prayer with the hour of bereavement and the scenes of death suffice to show this.
James Martineau
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The pinafore of the child will be more than a match for the frock of the bishop and the surplice of the priest.
James Martineau
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Grief is only the memory of widowed affections.
James Martineau