Quote

Terror is everywhere the beginning of religion.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Atheism
Beginning
Religion
Terror
Everywhere

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
Whence has come thy lasting power.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
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
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
Physical science has taught us to associate Deity with the normal rather than with the abnormal.
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 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
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 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 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
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
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
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 contraction of theological influence has been at once the best measure, and the essential condition of intellectual advance.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Image
Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the bark of human happiness is most often wrecked.
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 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
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
Image
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
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