Richard Hurd Quotes

In this awfully stupendous manner (at which reason stands aghast, and faith herself is half confounded), was the grace of God to man, at length, manifested: and thus it is, when we come a little to unfold the record, or testimony of the Gospel, that God hath given to us eternal life; and that this life is in his Son.

Toleration should be allowed to those who dissent from an Establishment, & that such Establishment should be guarded by a Test Law. Both these things are provided for in our happy Constitution, & it is not easy to see what should incline wise & good men to think otherwise.

The spirit of Chivalry was a fire which soon spent itself: but that of Romance, which was kindled at it, burnt long, and continued its light and heat even to the politer ages.
The greatest geniuses of our own and foreign countries, such as Ariosto and Tasso in Italy, and Spenser and Milton in England, were seduced by these barbarities of their forefathers; were even charmed by the Gothic Romances. Was this caprice and absurdity in them? Or, may there not be something in the Gothic Romance peculiarly suited to the views of a genius, and to the ends of poetry? And may not the philosophic moderns have gone too far in their perpetual ridicule and contempt of it?

Nobody...ought to be punished for religious opinions.

Mr. Burke's book <nowiki>[</nowiki>Reflections on the Revolution in France<nowiki>]</nowiki> is very entertaining, and, what is better, contains much truth and sound political reflection, though sometimes dressed in a fantastic mode of expression. I hope the innovating humour will decline among us, and that men will be satisfied in being happy after the old way.

As to Gibbon, I have read a part of his third volume. Though a writer of sense, parts, and industry, I read him with little pleasure. His loaded and luxuriant style is disgusting to the last degree; and his work is polluted every where by the most immoral as well as irreligious insinuations.