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The unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky

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William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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Making every allowance for the errors of the most extreme fallibility, the history of Catholicism would on this hypothesis represent an amount of imposture probably unequaled in the annals of the human race.
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Passions weaken, but habits strengthen, with age, and it is the great task of youth to set the current of habit and to form the tastes which are most productive of happiness in life.
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When the Church obtained the direction of the civil power, she soon modified or abandoned the tolerant maxims she had formerly inculcated and, in the course of a few years, restrictive laws were enacted, both against the Jews and against the heretics.
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William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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There is no wild beast so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning their faith.
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The doctrine of a material hell in its effect was to chill and deaden the sympathies, predispose men to inflict suffering, and to retard the march of civilization.
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Spain and southern Italy, in which Catholicism has most deeply implanted its roots, are even now, probably beyond all other countries in Europe, those in which inhumanity to animals is most wanton and unrebuked.
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There is no possible line of conduct which has at some time and place been condemned, and which has not at some other time and place been enjoined as a duty.
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Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was inundated with blood, which was shed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the ecclesiastical authorities.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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The contraction of theological influence has been at once the best measure, and the essential condition of intellectual advance.
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Abortion... was probably regarded by the average Roman of the later days of Paganism much as Englishmen in the last century regarded convivial excesses, as certainly wrong, but so venial as scarcely to deserve censure.
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Whence has come thy lasting power.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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There have certainly been many periods in history when virtue was more rare than under the Caesars but there has probably never been a period when vice was more extravagant or uncontrolled.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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One of the most important lessons that experience teaches is that, on the whole, success depends more upon character than upon either intellect or fortune.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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In proportion to its power, Protestantism has been as persecuting as Catholicism.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the bark of human happiness is most often wrecked.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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The simple record of these three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the discourses of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.
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Terror is everywhere the beginning of religion.
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Physical science has taught us to associate Deity with the normal rather than with the abnormal.
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