James Anthony Froude

Who was James Anthony Froude?

James Anthony Froude was an English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine. From his upbringing amidst the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement, Froude intended to become a clergyman, but doubts about the doctrines of the Anglican church, published in his scandalous 1849 novel The Nemesis of Faith, drove him to abandon his religious career. Froude turned to writing history, becoming one of the best known historians of his time for his History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. Inspired by Thomas Carlyle, Froude's historical writings were often fiercely polemical, earning him a number of outspoken opponents. Froude continued to be controversial up until his death for his Life of Carlyle, which he published along with personal writings of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. These publications illuminated Carlyle's often selfish personality, and led to persistent gossip and discussion of the couple's marital problems.

Famous Quotes:

• As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.
• Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
• Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; but a belief is always sensitive.
• In everyday things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty.
• The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.
• No person is ever good for much, that hasn't been swept off their feet by enthusiasm between ages twenty and thirty.
• Our human laws are more or less imperfect copies of the external laws as we see them.
• Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.
• To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.
• We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone.