SABINE BARING-GOULD QUOTES II

Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)

Of love there are two sorts. The first is that whose highest manifestation is seen in the affection of the sexes. This is always egoistic. It arises from either sex being imperfect without the other; and it is the straining of one sex towards that other which will complete it, because alone it is unable to realize perfectly its nature.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: sex


If man refused to believe those truths which were not made evident to his reason, he could not live among his fellows, nor could he make the slightest progress in civilization.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: civilization


Certain of the angels having fallen, God made men, that they might take their vacated places.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters

Tags: angels


That we may be able to profit by the experience of others, we are endowed with an instinct adapted to the purpose of drawing us into the company of our fellows--this is the social instinct.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: instinct


By the conception of Christ as the eternal equation of the finite and the infinite, one obtains a clear notion of the grandeur of the mystery of mediation . He is not merely the regenerator of man, He is the peacemaker between man and man, man and all nature, and man and God; the link between man and man, and man and nature, and man and God.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: nature


There is this peculiarity about the pleasure derived from the beautiful, that when raised to the highest pitch it sharpens into pain, acute and exquisite—pain which is itself a delight, produced by the strain of the soul to grasp and assimilate the perfect.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: pain


The idea of the supernatural is not a rational verity. It belongs to the sentiment which is the faculty of perceiving the infinite, whereas the reason is, by its nature, finite. God is perceived by the heart, not concluded by the mind.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: God


The faculty of teaching freely is a right, for instruction is a duty.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: duty


In the family, from the first, the idea of authority has appeared. Protection and order are requisites of the family; and these cannot exist without recognition of an authority.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: authority


If reason has never been able to found a religion which will bear criticism, it is because of this, that it begins with an undemonstrable hypothesis and ends in an hypothesis. Consequently, all attempts to prove the existence of God are convincing only to those already convinced.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: criticism


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


Art cannot become worn out; from change to change it will alter its type, but each type will be beautiful, and none will be exhaustive.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: change


Liberty is potential. To create a free being is to place before it the problem of its destiny.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: destiny


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


Meditation is an abstraction of attention from one's self, to fix it entirely on God, it is the will insisting on His reality.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: God


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


Immorality is the negation of my higher nature; the affirmation of my animality alone and its opposition to my spirituality to the exclusion of the latter.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: spirituality


To any one with artistic taste, poetic feeling, and refined perceptions, there is something inexpressibly sad in passing from a Catholic to a Protestant country, it is like passing from sunshine into mist, from mountain variety and beauty into fens, well-drained, cut into square fields, but intolerably monotonous.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: beauty


I was fairly puzzled as I thought over all the divisions of the most learned Church in the most religious country in the world.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Only a Ghost

Tags: church


The drowning man may be saved by a plank or a rope, but there are circumstances in which plank or rope can not avail him. How much better for him to have learned that in himself is the principle of buoyancy.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: circumstances