SABINE BARING-GOULD QUOTES IV

Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)

Between the essential infinity and the realized finality there is opposition of natures; they are radically inverse. Nevertheless the finite is possible, because the infinite is.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity


Thus man believes in truths of two kinds, in those of absolute certainty through direct conviction, and in those of comparative certainty through conviction of the trustworthiness of the authority which propounds them.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: conviction


God, the principle and the end of all, gives Himself to all to multiply indefinitely His gifts one by the other, and to distribute them, thus inimitably augmented, through each to all. Associated in this work of universal solidarity, we reunite all the scattered fragments of God's perfection manifested in ourselves.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: perfection


The whole theory of Christian ethics is an application of the law of love as the link, and of reason as the differentiator. There are duties owed to God, to one's self, and to other men. The duty owed to God is the recognition of Him.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: God


Evil eyes look out for occasion, therefore give none.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Urith


The times have been bad, the hay was black with rain, the corn did not kern well, the mottled cow dropped her calf, the tenants have not paid, and so my poor boy gets nothing but advice in bushels and exhortations in yards.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Urith

Tags: advice


Because one man is a fool, is that reason why his friend ... should not be wise? Because one man throws away a diamond, why his comrade should not pick it up and wear it on his finger?

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Urith

Tags: fool


That Eve was Adam's second wife was a common Rabbinic speculation; certain of the commentators on Genesis having adopted this view to account for the double account of the creation of woman in the sacred text--first in Genesis i. 27, and secondly in Genesis ii. 18; and they say that Adam's first wife was named Lilith, but she was expelled from Eden, and after her expulsion Eve was created.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters


It is a singular fact that men generally, and every man in particular, constantly endeavor to desert real life for one which is altogether artificial, artistic, and, in a word, ideal. The ideal is an image of perfection created by the soul itself.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: desert


Man is double, having an animal and a spiritual nature, at war with one another.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: nature


Thus there opens out to man a magnificent prospect of advance in the acquisition of truth, beauty and goodness; for if these are three aspects of the Ideal, three indefinite realities never to be attained in their entirety, because by their nature they are infinite, the progress of man in science, art and virtue is without possible limit.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: art


The only knowledge man has of his thoughts is by their expression, consequently, every material being that can be conceived by the mind exists or can exist . He may imagine what is incongruous, as the sphinx. But his imagination is a piecing together of realities, not a creation out of nothing.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: imagination


But if every positive sentiment is good and true, by the sole fact of its existence, it follows that a sentiment which contradicts another may be a good and a relative truth, inasmuch as it is the veritable expression of an individual conscience, but that it is also an evil and an error, inasmuch as it contradicts another sentiment, thought or will, which emanates, with the same titles, from another individual conscience.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: conscience


If there be an axiom evident to all, it is this, that liberty is a first necessity of existence.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: liberty


Worship is the language of belief.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: belief


Liberty acting without motive is no more liberty, it is chance, and chance is another name for ignorance.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: chance


Deny God, and authority rests on force alone; we relapse into despotism.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: authority


Reason is dependent on faith, and faith is helpless without reason. A belief of some sort underlies every system of thought. If we bore as deep as we can through systems, the deepest thing we reach is an undemonstrable thesis, which is accepted and believed in as a verity. It is the primary substance which is unaffected by the most corrosive acid so long as it remains uncombined.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: faith


Power is the exercise of superior force against a body that resists. Suppress the idea of resistance, and the idea of power disappears.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: exercise


Just as every man must see for himself, so every man must believe for himself. Acceptation of truth is a purely personal, individual act.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: truth