William Ralph Inge Quotes

Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.

Originality, I fear, is too often only undetected and frequently unconscious plagiarism.

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

Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to the average person.

The happy people are those who are producing something ...

I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour.

God does not always punish a nation by sending it adversity. More often He gives the oppressors their hearts' desire, and sends leanness withal into their soul.

Faith is an act of self-consecration, in which the will, the intellect, and the affections all have their place.

Beautiful thoughts hardly bring us to God until they are acted upon. No one can have a true idea of right until he does it.

Two chief pitfalls into which the mystic is liable to fall
dreamy inactivity and Antinomianism.

The statistics of suicide show that, for non-combatants at least, life is more interesting in war than in peace.

Boredom is a certain sign that we are allowing our faculties to rust in idleness.

The world belongs to those who think and act with it, who keep a finger on its pulse.

Let us remember, when we are inclined to be disheartened, that the private soldier is a poor judge of the fortunes of a great battle.

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.

In imperialism nothing fails like success. If the conqueror oppresses his subjects, they will become fanatical patriots, and sooner or later have their revenge; if he treats them well, and governs them for their good, they will multiply faster than their rulers, till they claim their independence.

Admiration for ourselves and our institutions is too often measured by our contempt and dislike for foreigners.

The vulgar mind always mistakes the exceptional for the important.

Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.

But the instinct of hoarding, like all other instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the institution of private property comes another institution-that of plunder and brigandage. In private life, no motive of action is at present so powerful and so persistent as acquisitiveness, which unlike most other desires, knows no satiety. The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got, and not till then.

For better or worse, man is the tool-using animal, and as such he has become the lord of creation. When he is lord also of himself, he will deserve his self-chosen title homo sapiens.

The church that is married to the spirit of this age, becomes a widow in the next.

Our test is infallible. Whatever view of reality deepens our sense of the tremendous issues of life in the world wherein we move, is for us nearer the truth than any view which diminishes that sense.

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and a common hatred of its neighbors.

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.

I think middle-age is the best time, if we can escape the fatty degeneration of the conscience which often sets in at about fifty.

The great discovery of the nineteenth century, that we are of one blood with the lower animals, has created new ethical obligations which have not yet penetrated the public conscience. The clerical profession has been lamentably remiss in preaching this obvious duty.

Therefore from the storehouse of His Passion I borrow the price of my debt,

Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival.

The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values.

Take away fear, and the battle of Freedom is half won.

Each generation takes a special pleasure in removing the household gods of its parents from their pedestals, and consigning them to the cupboard.

The whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and in the passive.

Man will never be entirely willing to give up this world for the next nor the next world for this.

The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got.

Even the paradise of fools is not an unpleasant abode while it is inhabitable.

The soul is dyed by the color of its leisure hours.

Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.

We should think of the church as an orchestra in which the different churches play on different instruments while a Divine Conductor calls the tune.

Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.

The jealous man is so preoccupied with what he hasn't got that he fails to appreciate the value of what he has got. He loses the ability to feel glad because the sun is shining. He doesn't see the wonder and the newness of the beginning of spring.

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can't sit on it.

The right use of leisure is no doubt a harder problem than the right use of our working hours. The soul is dyed the color of its leisure thoughts.

Christianity promises to make men free; it never promises to make them independent.

This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better.

The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive.

Religion is caught, not taught.

All human love is a holy thing, the holiest thing in our experience.

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.

Civilization is a disease which is almost invariably fatal.

Don't break the silence unless you can improve on it.

The church is only a secular institution in which the half-educated speak to the half-converted.

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 ...

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.

There are no rewards or punishments - only consequences.

Philosophy means thinking things out for oneself. Ultimately, there can be only one true philosophy, since reason is one and we all live in the same world.

It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

The fruit of the tree of knowledge always drives man from some paradise or other; and even the paradise of fools is not an unpleasant abode while it is habitable.

No healthy civilization can ever be reared on a foundation of devitalized work.

It is a harder and a nobler task to preserve detachment in a crowd than in a cell; the little daily sacrifices of family life are often a greater trial than self-imposed mortifications.

Joy is the triumph of life; it is the sign that we are living our true life as spiritual beings.

The Devil deserves zero tolerance.