SABINE BARING-GOULD QUOTES
Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)
All ladies will be glad to learn that there is a tradition, Manichean, it is true, and anathematized by St. Clement, which nevertheless contains a large element of truth; it is to this effect, that Adam, when made, was like a beast, coarse, rude, and inanimate, but that from Eve he received his upright position, his polish, and his spirituality.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
But a principle is only true if it be universal. If I believe in my own judgment, I am bound to believe in the judgments of every one else. If I hold my own spirit to have in it the criteria of truth, I must allow that the same criteria exist in every other spirit of the present times, of the past and of the future. Either conscience is the expression of truth or it is not. If not, we can no more trust to reason or primary beliefs, we cannot affirm anything or know anything. But if it is, then it is so for every one, and I have no more right to contradict its expression in other men than I have to contradict it in myself.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Without the idea of the indefinite, mathematics would have halted at addition and subtraction, and never have risen through geometry to astronomy.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Division is the precursor of death.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Humanity is not like a bundle of sticks, a cluster of hardly outlined microcosms, nor an arithmetical addition of integers, but is a body constituted, after the fashion of the human body, of adapted members, living, throbbing and moving as one.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
If I hold my own opinion to be absolute truth, my own judgment to be the only measure of truth, I constitute myself God.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
I must doubt everything, or realize my faith by exterminating every obstacle.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
What is Atheism? In itself nothing; a denial of a positive idea. Every negation involves a position. And if every positive idea be a reality, a negation is nothing.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The only authority that is unassailable is that of God.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Connected with the fall of Satan is his lameness. The devil is represented in art and in legion as limping on one foot; this was occasioned by his having broken his leg in his fall.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
Now you must know that in the Holy Shades no religious animosities exist. Each ghost has his own peculiar liking, and generally continues attached to what he loved most during his sojourn on earth, but he never considers it necessary to use bad language to the other ghosts if they should be of a different way of thinking; and such terms as vulgar Protestant and superstitious Papist are never heard amongst us.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Only a Ghost
I have a right to do whatsoever I like within the limits of possibility, and everything is possible which is not contradictory; consequently the field of liberty is infinite.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
In the pursuit of the Ideal, happiness is the notice to the sentiment that it is following the right track, that it is accomplishing its destiny.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
In considering man, made up of body and spirit, we must not regard him as body alone, or as spirit alone. The analysis of his body by the anatomist and chemist is satisfactory so long as it is not opposed to the analysis of the spirit by the metaphysician.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
In following the natural formation of the primitive family, we cannot escape the conviction that the relations which manifest themselves are not the product of man's free choice, but are a consequence of the nature of things.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Man feels the need of giving utterance to his thoughts, and this need is imperious like a duty demanding accomplishment. He feels that to keep the truth to himself is a crime equal to that of compressing the utterance of it in another.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
In its origin the idea of right is so simple, so humble, one may say, that philosophers have gone elsewhere for its explanation.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The free being is only that which makes itself free.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Happiness is only attained by the free will agreeing in its freedom to accord with the will of God.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
What is living religion? It is the human soul growing towards the Ideal, throwing out tendrils here and there, and ever ascending from bud to bloom; ever enriched by the fact of its perfectability, operating incessantly on the trammels an establishment may lace around it, straining them and bursting them, ever seeking its proper expansion, and ever therefore impatient of restraint.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity