Top 94 William Ralph Inge Quotes
#1. The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got.
William Ralph Inge
#3. Two chief pitfalls into which the mystic is liable to fall
dreamy inactivity and Antinomianism.
William Ralph Inge
#4. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#6. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#7. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#8. Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man.
William Ralph Inge
#10. All human love is a holy thing, the holiest thing in our experience.
William Ralph Inge
#11. Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater.
William Ralph Inge
#12. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#14. Boredom is a certain sign that we are allowing our faculties to rust in idleness.
William Ralph Inge
#16. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#19. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#20. Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.
William Ralph Inge
#22. Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.
William Ralph Inge
#23. Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival.
William Ralph Inge
#24. Therefore from the storehouse of His Passion I borrow the price of my debt,
William Ralph Inge
#25. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#26. Admiration for ourselves and our institutions is too often measured by our contempt and dislike for foreigners.
William Ralph Inge
#27. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#28. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#30. Faith is an act of self-consecration, in which the will, the intellect, and the affections all have their place.
William Ralph Inge
#34. Over-population is a phenomenon connected with the survival of the unfit, and it is a mechanism which has created conditions favourable to the survival of the unfit and the elimination of the fit.
William Ralph Inge
#35. There is no limit to the noble aspirations which the words "my country" may evoke.
William Ralph Inge
#36. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#37. The command, 'Be fruitful and multiply', was promulgated, according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two persons.
William Ralph Inge
#38. Each generation takes a special pleasure in removing the household gods of its parents from their pedestals, and consigning them to the cupboard.
William Ralph Inge
#40. A monarch frequently represents his subjects better that an elected assembly; and if he is a good judge of character he is likely to have more capable and loyal advisers.
William Ralph Inge
#41. A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and a common hatred of its neighbors.
William Ralph Inge
#42. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#43. Events in the past maybe roughly divided into those which and probably never happened and those which do not matter.
William Ralph Inge
#45. The vulgar mind always mistakes the exceptional for the important.
William Ralph Inge
#46. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#47. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#49. The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.
William Ralph Inge
#50. The church that is married to the spirit of this age, becomes a widow in the next.
William Ralph Inge
#51. Beneath the dingy uniformity of international fashions in dress, man remains what he has always been; a splendid fighting animal, a self-sacrificing hero, and a blood thirsty savage.
William Ralph Inge
#52. In dealing with Englishmen you can be sure of one thing only, that the logical solution will not be adopted.
William Ralph Inge
#53. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.
William Ralph Inge
#54. It is becoming impossible for those who mix at all with their fellow-men to believe that the grace of God is distributed denominationally.
William Ralph Inge
#55. A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can't sit on it.
William Ralph Inge
#56. To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.
William Ralph Inge
#57. I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour.
William Ralph Inge
#58. The modern world belongs to the half-educated, a rather difficult class, because they do not realize how little they know.
William Ralph Inge
#60. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#61. When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve, "My dear, we live in an age of transition."
William Ralph Inge
#62. The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive.
William Ralph Inge
#63. The greatest obstacle to progress is not man's inherited pugnacity, but his incorrigible tendency to parasitism.
William Ralph Inge
#66. Man will never be entirely willing to give up this world for the next nor the next world for this.
William Ralph Inge
#67. The whole of creation, with all of its laws, is a revelation of God.
William Ralph Inge
#68. No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.
William Ralph Inge
#69. Experience proves that none is so cruel as the disillusioned sentimentalist.
William Ralph Inge
#70. Joy is the triumph of life; it is the sign that we are living our true life as spiritual beings.
William Ralph Inge
#71. We must cut our coat according to our cloth, and adapt ourselves to changing circumstances.
William Ralph Inge
#73. It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own.
William Ralph Inge
#74. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#75. Originality, I fear, is too often only undetected and frequently unconscious plagiarism.
William Ralph Inge
#76. Christianity promises to make men free; it never promises to make them independent.
William Ralph Inge
#77. No healthy civilization can ever be reared on a foundation of devitalized work.
William Ralph Inge
#78. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#79. There is no law of progress. Our future is in our own hands, to make or to mar. It will be an uphill fight to the end, and would we have it otherwise? Let no one suppose that evolution will ever exempt us from struggles. 'You forget,' said the Devil, with a chuckle, 'that I have been evolving too.
William Ralph Inge
#80. It is quite natural and inevitable that, if we spend sixteen hours daily of our waking lives in thinking about the affairs of the world and five minutes in thinking about God and our souls, this world will seem two hundred times more real to us than God.
William Ralph Inge
#81. Lutheranism is essentially German ... It worships a God who is neither just nor merciful.
William Ralph Inge
#82. Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.
William Ralph Inge
#83. Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to the average person.
William Ralph Inge
#84. The whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and in the passive.
William Ralph Inge
#85. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#86. This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better.
William Ralph Inge
#87. The church is only a secular institution in which the half-educated speak to the half-converted.
William Ralph Inge
#88. Hatred toward any human being cannot exist in the same heart as love to God.
William Ralph Inge
#89. Even the paradise of fools is not an unpleasant abode while it is inhabitable.
William Ralph Inge
#90. 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.
William Ralph Inge
#91. The statistics of suicide show that, for non-combatants at least, life is more interesting in war than in peace.
William Ralph Inge
#92. The world belongs to those who think and act with it, who keep a finger on its pulse.
William Ralph Inge
#93. Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.
William Ralph Inge
#94. The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.
William Ralph Inge
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