Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)
But the right of might is not a right, it is the violation of right; and the obligation to obey the strongest is not a duty, it is a physical necessity. It is playing with words to call that a right which is a faculty growing and waning with the power which imposes it, and that a duty which is necessary submission to a power against which resistance is vain.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The life of the animal is more complete than that of the vegetable, for it intervenes more spontaneously and more efficaciously in the double function of self-protection and continuance of the species.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
That which mankind wanted, and wants still, is not new truths, but the co-ordination of all aspects of the truth.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Wisdom is inconceivable apart from something about which it can be called into operation.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
I do not tread on you save when you grovel in the dirt.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Urith
What then is Error? It is nothing per se. It is the opposition of one relative truth against another to the exclusion of the latter.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Hitherto Christianity has leaned, or has been represented as leaning, on authority--on the authority of an infallible text, or of an inerrable Church. The inadequacy of either support has been repeatedly demonstrated, and as the props have been withdrawn, the faith of many has fallen with a crash.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
God's existence escapes demonstration; it is idle to ask reason to prove what is beyond its scope, for reason is the faculty of dealing with the finite.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity