Quote

The heavens, with their everlasting faithfulness, look down on no sadder contradiction than the sluggard and the slattern in their prayers.

James Martineau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Martineau
Age: 94 †
Born: 1805
Born: April 21
Died: 1900
Died: January 11
Philosopher
Norwich
Norfolk
Contradiction
Prayer
Sluggard
Heaven
Sadder
Look
Negligence
Looks
Faithfulness
Heavens
Everlasting
Prayers

More quotes by James Martineau

Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is no room in the universe for the least contempt or pride but only for a gentle and a reverent heart.
James Martineau
Image
The incarnation is true, not of Christ exclusively, but of Man universally, and God everlastingly.
James Martineau
Image
The mere lapse of years is not life. To eat, to drink, and sleep to be exposed to darkness and the light to pace around in the mill of habit, and turn thought into an instrument of trade-this is not life. Knowledge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith, alone can give vitality to the mechanism of existence.
James Martineau
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We can neither change nor overpower God's eternal suffrage against selfishness and meanness.
James Martineau
Image
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
Image
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?
James Martineau
Image
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
Image
Every man's highest, nameless though it be, is his 'living God'.
James Martineau
Image
We should count time by heart-throbs.
James Martineau
Image
Grief is only the memory of widowed affections.
James Martineau
Image
There is no human life so poor and small as not to hold many a divine possibility.
James Martineau
Image
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.
James Martineau
Image
Religion is no more possible without prayer than poetry without language, or music without atmosphere.
James Martineau
Image
We are each of us responsible for the evil we may have prevented.
James Martineau
Image
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
Image
It was in His parting sorrow--that Jesus asked His disciples to remember Him and never was entreaty of affection answered so for ever since has His name been breathed in morning and evening prayers that none can count, and has brought down some gift of sanctity and peace on the anguish of bereavement, and the remorse of sin.
James Martineau