70 quotes
It was brought home to me that two men may be as sincere, as earnest, as faithful, as uncompromising, and yet hold opinions far asunder as the poles.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Once in our lives we have all to choose. More or less we have all felt once the same emotions.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Show me if I am wrong. It is easy to be mistaken. But do not tell me it is wicked of me to have thought all this, for it is not — I am certain it is not.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Perhaps the heart does not deceive; never does give a false answer, except to those double-minded unhappy ones who do care about themselves, and so play tricks with it and tamper with it.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Oh! what a frightful business is this modern society; the race for wealth — wealth. I am ashamed to write the word. Wealth means well-being, weal, the opposite of woe. And is that money? or can money buy it?
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
In the strength of my own soul, for myself, at least, I would say boldly, rather let me bear the consequences of my own acts myself, even if it be eternal vengeance, and God requires it, than allow the shadow of my sin to fall upon the innocent.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
I could never fear a God who kept a hell prison-house. No, not though he flung me there because I refused. There is a power stronger than such a one; and it is possible to walk unscathed even in the burning furnace.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
I believe in God, not because the Bible tells me that he is, but because my heart tells me so; and the same heart tells me we can only have His peace with us if we love Him and obey Him, and that we can only he happy when we each love our neighbour better than ourselves.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
That the consequence of his guilt should he transferred from him to one who is innocent (although that innocent one he himself willing to accept it), whatever else it be, is not justice. We are mocking the word when we call it such.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
People canvass up and down the value and utility of Christianity, and none of them seem to see that it was the common channel towards which all the great streams of thought in the old world were tending, and that in some form or other when they came to unite it must have been.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
What we call knowing a man's character, is knowing how he will act in such and such conditions. The better we know him the more surely we can prophesy. If we know him perfectly, we are certain.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
What is right or duty without power? To tell a man it is his duty to submit his judgment to the judgment of the church, is like telling a wife it is her duty to love her husband — a thing easy to say, but meaning simply nothing. Affection must be won, not commanded.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Now, to a single-minded man, who is either brave enough or reckless enough to surrender himself wholly to one idea, and look neither right nor left, but only forward, what earthly consequences may follow is not material.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Genuine belief ended with persecution. As soon as it was felt that to punish a man for maintaining an independent opinion was shocking and unjust, so soon a doubt had entered whether the faith established was unquestionably true.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
The noble image of the man is effaced, is destroyed. Instead of a man to love and to follow, we have a man-god to worship. From being the example of devotion, he is its object; the religion of Christ ended with his life, and left us instead but the Christian religion.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
You cannot reason people into loving those whom they are not drawn to love; they cannot reason themselves into it; and there are some contrarieties of temper which are too strong even for the obligations of relationship.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
A dreamer he was, and ever would be. Yet dreaming need not injure us, if it do but take its turn with waking; and even dreams themselves may be turned to beauty, by favoured men to whom nature has given the powers of casting them into form.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Ay, to those lofty beings, be they who they will, who look down from their starry thrones on the strange figures flitting to and fro over this earth of ours, the wild recklessness of us mortals with each other may well lose its painful interest.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Women's eyes are rapid in detecting a heart which is ill at ease with itself, and, knowing the value of sympathy, and finding their own greatest happiness not in receiving it, but in giving it, with them to be unhappy is at once to be interesting.
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
She would gladly have been more to him than she could be — because she felt (she did not deny it to herself) that she would sooner have been his wife than Leonard's. But why, because they could not be all to one another, must they be as nothing?
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)