SABINE BARING-GOULD QUOTES VI

Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)

What is all creation but an aspiration towards what it presupposes, the Infinite, from the atom to the globes that revolve in space, from the mineral to the man?

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity


As those things affording animal pleasure are necessary to the well-being of the body, so are those things yielding intellectual or moral delight necessary for the perfecting of the spirit.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: pleasure


Religion! you should have seen his face, he started at the word as if he had been shot.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Only a Ghost


That Eve was Adam's second wife was a common Rabbinic speculation; certain of the commentators on Genesis having adopted this view to account for the double account of the creation of woman in the sacred text--first in Genesis i. 27, and secondly in Genesis ii. 18; and they say that Adam's first wife was named Lilith, but she was expelled from Eden, and after her expulsion Eve was created.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters


Personality is, in fact, only a free being emphasizing and recognizing itself as such. Every man makes his own personality, he is to that extent his own creator.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: personality


The narrative of the Gospels may carry conviction to some minds, the testimony of the Church may take hold of and satisfy others, but if so, what is it that really convinces? It is the fact, or, if the expression be preferred, the idea of the Incarnation commending itself to the soul of man. That idea, looking upon the soul of man, bears its own guarantee with it, and thus, and thus only, through the head or through the heart, enchains consent.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: soul


Thus man believes in truths of two kinds, in those of absolute certainty through direct conviction, and in those of comparative certainty through conviction of the trustworthiness of the authority which propounds them.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: conviction


In considering the right of man, we have had to treat him as an unit, but the state of separation is not that of the primitive existence of men. On the contrary, the first man alone could have risen into being outside of all social relations; every other man has been born in the bosom of a family, and therefore finds himself in the midst of a society already shaped; and, being unable to grow up without assistance, the association has maintained itself, and the ideas of those educated in it have been moulded by the organization.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: family


Evil is the rejection of the infinite for the finite.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity


Literary ladies may point to the primal mother as the first authoress; for a Gospel of Eve existed in the times of St. Epiphanius, who mentions it as being in repute among the Gnostics.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters


Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng,
Blend with ours your voices in the triumph song.
Glory, laud, and honor unto Christ the King,
This through countless ages men and angels sing.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

"Onward Christian Soldiers"

Tags: angels


Before the world was, God was the Absolute, inconceivable save as being. We cannot attribute to Him any quality, for qualities are inconceivable apart from matter.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: God


Society is the theatre, obligatory for the emancipation and development of the creative power in man. To reject social life is to deprive ourselves of the power of profiting by the experience of the past and the present.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: power


Supreme happiness to reason, that is the Ideal of the intellect, is the attainment of certainty upon every subject and about all things.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: happiness


My dear sir, if we only talked about what we understood, our conversation would be extremely limited.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Only a Ghost

Tags: conversation


Now, as a ghost, of course I am invisible, but when I wish for information I have the power of investing myself with the outward appearance of an intelligent stranger, and of assuming the language of the country in which I am sojourning. People who would naturally be shy of a Greek-speaking ghost, might have no objection to impart information to a quiet looking stranger dressed in black, and indulging in broken English.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Only a Ghost

Tags: appearance


Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!

SABINE BARING-GOULD

"Onward Christian Soldiers"

Tags: Jesus


Of authority there are two sorts, the authority of right, and the authority of force.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: authority


Interference with personal liberty for opinions is immoral, for every man has a right to his own opinions and a right to express them; and interference with the liberty of A is only lawful when A has violated the rights of B, and then one interference must exactly balance the other. When an idea takes the knife like Lady Macbeth, it has on its hands a dye which all the perfumes of Araby cannot efface. It has defied morality, and, as its penalty, morality delivers it over to impotence.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: liberty


If Catholicism be the principle of inclusion, Protestantism is the principle of exclusion. The first is the system of conciliation of all verities, the second is the opposition of all verities to their mutual exclusion.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity