Skip to content

Let reason count the stars, weigh the mountains, fathom the depths — the employment becomes her, and the success is glorious. But when the question is, "How shall man be just with God?" reason must be silent, revelation must speak; and he who will not hear it assimilates himself to the first deist, Cain; he may not kill a brother, he certainly destroys himself.

— Henry Melvill Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Another quote →

Topics

Mind

More quotes by Henry Melvill

There is not one of you whose actions do not operate on the actions of others — operate, we mean, in the way of example.

The Bible tells me explicitly that Christ was God; and it tells me, as explicitly that Christ was man. It does not go on to state the modus or manner of the union.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

I learn the depth to which I have sunk from the length of the chain let down to up-draw me. I ascertain the mightiness of the ruin by examining the machinery for restoration.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Indifference, if let alone, will produce obduracy; and obduracy, if let alone, will produce torment.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

The mysteries of the Bible should teach us, at one and the same time, our nothingness and our greatness; producing humility, and animating hope. I bow before these mysteries.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

All Henry Melvill quotes →

You may also like

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

Friedrich Schiller On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Henry Melvill (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.