Quotes from Sabine Baring-Gould

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.

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.

Division is the precursor of death.

The free being is only that which makes itself free.

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

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.

The only authority that is unassailable is that of God.

If I hold my own opinion to be absolute truth, my own judgment to be the only measure of truth, I constitute myself God.

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.

Happiness is only attained by the free will agreeing in its freedom to accord with the will of God.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Without the idea of the indefinite, mathematics would have halted at addition and subtraction, and never have risen through geometry to astronomy.

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.

In its origin the idea of right is so simple, so humble, one may say, that philosophers have gone elsewhere for its explanation.

Onward, Christian soldiers,Marching as to war,With the Cross of JesusGoing on before!

Now the day is over,Night is drawing nigh;Shadows of the eveningSteal across the sky.

The fame of Maria Foote's beauty and charm of manner had reached London, and in May 1814, she made her first appearance at Covent Garden Theatre and personated Amanthis in 'The Child of Nature' with such grace and effect that the manager complimented her with an immediate engagement.

No man need go blindly to destruction, for God has given him guidance and power of seeing whither he goes.

In Cornwall, it is quite possible to take a stride from the richest vegetation into the abomination of desolation. It has been said in mockery that Cornwall does not grow wood enough to make coffins for the people.