The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind. . . . The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state… — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share Image
Faith always presented to the mind the idea of an abnormal intellectual condition, of the subversion or suspension of the critical faculties. It sometimes comprised more than this, but it always included this. It was the opposite of doubt and of the spirit of doubt. What irreverent men called credulity, reverent men called faith; and although one word was more… — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share
There are times in the lives of most of us, when we would have given all the world to be as we were but… — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share Image
[Middleton] contended that the religious leaders of the fourth century had admitted, eulogised, and habitually acted upon principles that were diametrically opposed, not simply to the aspirations of a transcendent sanctity, but to the dictates of the most common honesty. He showed that they had applauded falsehood, that they had practised the most wholesale forgery, that they had habitually and… — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share
The moral duty to be expected in different ages is not a unity of standard, or of acts, but a unity of tendency ... At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity and finally, its influence is felt in… — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share
The unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised… — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share Image
There is no possible line of conduct which has at some time and place been condemned, and which has not at some other time… — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share Image
I venture to maintain that there are multitudes to whom the necessity of discharging the duties of a butcher would be so inexpressibly painful… — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share Image
Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the bark of human happiness is most often wrecked. — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share Image
“One of the great differences between childhood and manhood is that we come to like our work more than our play. It becomes to us if not the chief pleasure at least the chief interest of our lives, and even when it is not this, an essential condition of our happiness. Few lives produce so little happiness as those that… — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share
The doctrine of a material hell in its effect was to chill and deaden the sympathies, predispose men to inflict suffering, and to retard… — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share Image
All over Europe the organs that represent dogmatic interests are in permanent opposition to the progressive tendencies around them, and are rapidly sinking into contempt. In every country in which a strong political life is manifested, the secularisation of politics is the consequence. Each stage of that movement has been initiated and effected by those who are most indifferent to… — William Edward Hartpole Lecky Copy Share
