Quotes from William Temple

Some of the Fathers went so far as to esteem the love of music a sign of predestination, as a thing divine, and reserved for the felicities of heaven itself.

True worship is when a person, through their person, attains intimacy and friendship with God.

The first glass is for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the forth for my enemies.

The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child's home.

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.

No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.

If your prayer is selfish, the answer will be something that will rebuke your selfishness. You may not recognize it as having come at all, but it is sure to be there.

When I pray coincidences happen and when I don't they don't.

The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child's home.

Man's wisdom is his best friend folly his worst enemy.

You may keep your beauty and your health, unless you destroy them yourself, or discourage them to stay with you, by using them ill.

The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor.

There is no structural organization of society which can bring about the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth, since all systems can be perverted by the selfishness of man.

The first glass is for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the forth for my enemies.

Our present time is indeed a criticizing and critical time, hovering between the wish, and the inability to believe. Our complaints are like arrows shot up into the air at no target: and with no purpose they only fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves.

The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.

There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others.

We shall say without hesitation that the atheist who is moved by love is moved by the Spirit of God; an atheist who lives by love is saved by his faith in the God whose existence (under that name) he denies.

Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose--all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.

To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.

Religion is what you do with your solitude.

Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself one way or the other at all. . . . The humility which consists in being a great deal occupied about yourself, and saying you are of little worth, is not Christian humility. It is one form of self-occupation and a very poor and futile one at that.

It is a great mistake to think that God is chiefly concerned with our being religious.

The most influential of all educational factor is the conversation in a child's home.