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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
Among
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Slavery
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England
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All history shows that, in exact proportion as nations advance in civilisation, the accounts of miracles taking place among them become rarer and rarer, until at last they entirely cease.
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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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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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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.
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.
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There is no wild beast so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning their faith.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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The animal world being altogether external to the scheme of redemption, was regarded as beyond the range of duty, and the belief that we have any kind of obligation to its members has never been inculcated - has never, I believe, been even admitted - by Catholic theologians.
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Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the bark of human happiness is most often wrecked.
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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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There are some poisons which, before they kill men, allay pain and diffuse a soothing sensation through the frame. We may recognize the hour of enjoyment they procure, but we must not separate it from the price at which it was purchased.
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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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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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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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Highly graduate taxation realizes most completely the supreme danger of democracy, creating a state of things in which one class imposes on another burdens which it is not asked to share, and impels the State into vast schemes of extravagance, under the belief that the whole costs will be thrown upon others.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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Pleasures that are in themselves innocent lose their power of pleasing if they become the sole or main object of pursuit.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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Fierce invectives against women form a conspicuous and grotesque portion of the writings of the Church fathers.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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Physical science has taught us to associate Deity with the normal rather than with the abnormal.
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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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Terror is everywhere the beginning of religion.
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The morals of men are more governed by their pursuits than by their opinions. A type of virtue is first formed by circumstances, and men afterwards make it the model upon which their theories are framed.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky