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No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.

William Ralph Inge

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William Ralph Inge
Pessimist
Optimism
Radical
Christianity
Grace
System
Christian

More quotes by William Ralph Inge

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Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.
William Ralph Inge
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The vulgar mind always mistakes the exceptional for the important.
William Ralph Inge
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The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things.
William Ralph Inge
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There is no law of progress. Our future is in our own hands, to make or to mar. It will be an uphill fight to the end, and would we have it otherwise? Let no one suppose that evolution will ever exempt us from struggles. 'You forget,' said the Devil, with a chuckle, 'that I have been evolving too.
William Ralph Inge
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Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.
William Ralph Inge
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Experience is a good teacher, but her fees are very high.
William Ralph Inge
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The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got.
William Ralph Inge
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Boredom is a certain sign that we are allowing our faculties to rust in idleness.
William Ralph Inge
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Each generation takes a special pleasure in removing the household gods of its parents from their pedestals, and consigning them to the cupboard.
William Ralph Inge
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Man, as we know him, is a poor creature he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction.
William Ralph Inge
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Civilization is a disease which is almost invariably fatal.
William Ralph Inge
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A man is never so truly and intensely himself as when he is most possessed by God. It is impossible to say where, in the spiritual life, the human will leaves off and divine grace begins.
William Ralph Inge
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It is becoming impossible for those who mix at all with their fellow-men to believe that the grace of God is distributed denominationally.
William Ralph Inge
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The statistics of suicide show that, for non-combatants at least, life is more interesting in war than in peace.
William Ralph Inge
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Deliberate cruelty to our defenceless and beautiful little cousins is surely one of the meanest and most detestable vices of which a human being can be guilty.
William Ralph Inge
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Action is the normal completion of the act of will which begins as prayer. That action is not always external, but it is always some kind of effective energy.
William Ralph Inge
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Don't break the silence unless you can improve on it.
William Ralph Inge
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No word in our language - not even Socialism - has been employed more loosely than Mysticism. The history of the word begins in close connexion with the Greek mysteries. A mystic is one who has been, or is being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about which he must keep his mouth shut.
William Ralph Inge
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They who will live for others shall have great troubles, but they shall seem to them small. Those who will live for themselves shall have small troubles, but they shall seem to them great.
William Ralph Inge
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The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions, and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.
William Ralph Inge