Neville Figgis Quotes

If ideas in politics more than elsewhere are the children of practical needs, none the less is it true, that the actual world is the result of men's thoughts.

True, the Christian Church still lives on. But it is only a living power in small groups. Some of its apparent strength is due to its inherited wealth and to the general lack of education. All this, however, is but for the moment.

If we are not immortal, we may be possessed by the world, we cannot possess it; we are strangers, it is our enemy; we take a little and then are gone. If we are to go on, we can appropriate it, make it our own, so that its beauty and its sorrow, all its mystery and its splendid acts, become part of us and shine for ever in a spirit that lives with God. Even worldliness demand otherworldliness to justify it. Only the immortals have a right to feel at home in this world.

Mr. Gladstone used to say that political ideals were never realised. That may be true, but it does not follow that they are never effective. Christian holiness is not only never achieved in perfection, but it is far less nearly and less frequently achieved than the ethical ideals of Pagans or Mohammedans.

"The Fellowship of the Mystery"; that is St. Paul's account of Churchmanship. It is a fellowship, a common life; and what is shared is a mystery, something that was once obscure, but is now in process of being made known. And this process goes on. However deep we go, there are yet farther deeps calling to us. No knowledge of God in Christ but opens the gate to a thousand fresh inquiries.

Men may appeal with more or less of sincerity to Christian sentiment as a factor in political controversy, but they have ceased to regard political theory as a part of Christian doctrine.

Our world is fonder of riches, perhaps, than ever it was, but I think that it is ceasing to believe in its idol. The danger is that it should cease to have any belief at all.

How far can the new wine of modern knowledge and changed ways of thought be poured into the old bottles of traditional religion?

Perhaps not many now read Tancred. ... Yet that book is far more than mere romance. It is evidence of the dissatisfaction with modern civilisation ...

In the struggle between liberty and authority the possession of a hostile printing press becomes of capital importance.

The universe contemplated by religion is by no means self-contained or self-sufficient, it is dependent for its origin and maintenance, as we are for daily bread and future hopes, upon the power and good-will of a being or beings of which science has no knowledge.

The Christian says that life is a good thing, but has been marred by sin; and suffers from the growing pains of youth.

Machiavelli was always considering the practical problem, how is Italy to be saved?

The despots of Italy were, in fact, in the Greek sense, tyrants, and Machiavelli did little more than say so. What gives him his importance is that what was true of the small despots of Italy was going to become true of the national monarchs of Europe.

Man is so made that he cannot be satisfied with less than the highest, and that he must be beaten down before he can be raised up.