SABINE BARING-GOULD QUOTES

Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)

Sabine Baring-Gould quote

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

Tags: spirituality


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

Tags: truth


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

Tags: mathematics


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

Tags: truth


Division is the precursor of death.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: death


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

Tags: fashion


I must doubt everything, or realize my faith by exterminating every obstacle.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: doubt


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

Tags: atheism


The only authority that is unassailable is that of God.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: authority


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

Tags: art


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

Tags: choice


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

Tags: ghosts


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

Tags: destiny


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

Tags: liberty


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


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

Tags: crime


The free being is only that which makes itself free.

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


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

Tags: freedom


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

Tags: religion