John Morley

And it is very wise, when a necessity of this kind is approaching, to anticipate it while it is yet a good way off; for then concession begets gratitude, and often brings a return.

The kind of concession which is really mischievous is just that which is made under terror and extreme pressure; and unhappily this has been the kind of concession which for more than two hundred years, it has been the fashion of men who…

I believe it would be a wise concession, upon grounds merely political, for the church of England to have the law of church rate abolished in all cases where it places her in fretting conflict with the dissenting bodies....

Were we asked to surrender an article of the creed in order to save the rest, or to consent to the abolition of the episcopal order, these things touch the faith of Christians and the life of the church, and cannot in any measure become…

Now we have lived into a time when the great danger of the church is the sale of her faith for gold....

In demanding the money of dissenters for the worship of the church, we practically invest them with a title to demand that she should be adapted to their use in return, and we stimulate every kind of interference with her belief and…

By judiciously waiving an undoubted legal claim, we not only do an act which the understood principles of modern liberty tend to favour and almost require, but we soothe ruffled minds and tempers, and what is more, we strengthen the case…

The church of England is much more likely of the two, to part with her faith than with her funds.

It is the old question, which is the greater, the gold or the altar that sanctifies the gold.

Had this question been more boldly asked and more truly answered in other times, we should not have been where we now are.

Some unity in belief is necessary to justify association in a Christian communion.

Will that unity in belief be promoted or impaired by the free action of mind within her, subjected to order?

It is all very well to sneer at councils: but who among us will deny that the councils which we acknowledge as lawful representatives of the universal church, were great and to all appearance necessary providential instruments in the…

It seems to me that these judgments are most important in their character as illustrations of a system, or I should rather say, of the failure of a system, parts of a vast scheme of forces and events in the midst of which we stand, which…

It may be that this rude shock to the mere scripturism which has too much prevailed, is intended to be the instrument of restoring a greater harmony of belief, and of the agencies for maintaining belief.

I remember telling the Archbishop of York at Penmaenmawr, when he was Bishop of Gloucester, that it seemed to me we had lived into a time when, speaking generally, penal proceedings for the maintenance of divine truth among the clergy…

I have been for near thirty-six years at public business, and I must myself be the judge how best to husband what little energy of brain, and time for using it, may remain to me.

But I am sincerely, though it may be erroneously, impressed with the belief that the quantity of my public work cannot be increased without its quality being yet further deteriorated.

Perhaps my critics have not been troubled as I have with this plague of quantity, and are not as deeply impressed as I am with the belief that grinding down the mental powers by an infinity of detail, is what now principally dwarfs our…

Gladstone’s policy is coming to be used as the concrete expression of a whole system of thought, to mean something for itself, and something widely different from either the policy pursued by whigs, or the policy attributed to Lord…

They believe, with certain misgivings, that he can offer them a new and more satisfactory system of foreign policy; and, with no misgivings, that he will break up the torpor which has fallen upon internal affairs.

In the moral power which you wield, go on to elevate and purify public life, and we shall all bless you, dear sir, as a regenerator of England.

He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; He who surpasses or subdues mankind, Must look down on the hate of those below.

I am, if possible, more attached to the institutions of my country than I was when, as a boy, I wandered among the sandhills of Seaforth, or frequented the streets of Liverpool.

I have learnt that there is a wisdom in a policy of trust, and folly in a policy of mistrust.