Lectures on Modern historyActon, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron
History
Lectures on Modern history
Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron
History, Modern
#100 A Christian is bound by his very creed to suspect evil, and
cannot release himself:--His religion has brought evil to light in a
way in which it never was before; it has shown its depth, subtlety,
ubiquity; and a revelation, full of mercy on the one hand, is terrible
in its exposure of the world's real state on the other. The Gospel
fastens the sense of evil upon the mind; a Christian is enlightened,
hardened, sharpened, as to evil; he sees it where others do
not.--MOZLEY, Essays, i. 308. All satirists, of course, work in the
direction of Christian doctrine, by the support they give to the
doctrine of original sin, making a sort of meanness and badness a law
of society.--MOZLEY, Letters, 333. Les critiques, meme malveillants,
sont plus pres de la verite derniere que les admirateurs.--NISARE,
Lit. fr., Conclusion. Les hommes superieurs doivent necessairement
passer pour mechants. Ou les autres ne voient ni un defaut, ni un
ridicule, ni un vice, leur implacable oeil l'apercoit.-BARBEY
D'AUREVILLY Figaro; 31st March 1888.
#101 Prenons garde de ne pas trop expliquer, pour ne pas fournir des
arguments a ceux qui veulent tout excuser.--BROGLIE. Reception de
Sorel, 46.
#102 The eternal truths and rights of things exist, fortunately,
independent of our thoughts or wishes, fixed as mathematics, inherent
in the nature of man and the world. They are no more to be trifled
with than gravitation.--FROUDE, Inaugural Lecture at St. Andrews,
1869, 4. What have men to do with interests? There is a right way
and a wrong way. That is all we need think about.--CARLYLE to FROUDE,
Longman's Magazine, December 1892, 151. As to History, it is full of
indirect but very effective moral teaching. It is not only, as
Bolingbroke called it, "Philosophy teaching by examples," but it is
morality teaching by examples.--It is essentially the study which best
helps the student to conceive large thoughts.--It is impossible to
overvalue the moral teaching of History.--FITCH, Lectures on Teaching,
432. Judging from the past history of our race, in ninety-nine cases
out of a hundred, war is a folly and a crime. Where it is so, it is
the saddest and the wildest of all follies, and the most heinous of
all crimes.--GREG, Essays on Political and Social Science, 1853,
i. 562. La volonte de tout un peuple ne peut rendre juste ce qui est
injuste: les representants d'une nation n'ont pas le droit de faire
ce que la nation n'a pas le droit de faire elle-meme.--B. CONSTANT,
Principes de Politique, i. 15.
#103 Think not that morality is ambulatory; that vices in one age are
not vices in another, or that virtues, which are under the everlasting
seal of right reason, may be stamped by opinion.--SIR THOMAS BROWNE,
Works, iv. 64.
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