Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Edward Hartpole Lecky
History
Vice
Many
Rare
Never
Vices
Period
Periods
Certainly
Caesars
Virtue
Uncontrolled
Probably
Extravagant

More quotes by William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Image
Fierce invectives against women form a conspicuous and grotesque portion of the writings of the Church fathers.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
Physical science has taught us to associate Deity with the normal rather than with the abnormal.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
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.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is no wild beast so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning their faith.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
There are times in the lives of most of us, when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
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
Image
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.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
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.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
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.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
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.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
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.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
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.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
The Augustinian doctrine of the damnation of unbaptized infants and the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation . . . surpass in atrocity any tenets that have ever been admitted into any pagan creed.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
Terror is everywhere the beginning of religion.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
Whenever the clergy were at the elbow of the civil arm, no matter whether they were Catholic or Protestant, persecution was the result.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
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.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
The contraction of theological influence has been at once the best measure, and the essential condition of intellectual advance.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
Whence has come thy lasting power.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky