Inspirational Quotes by William Temple
“The only thing of our very own which we contribute to our salvation is the sin which makes it necessary.”
“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.”
topics: Worship
“Pharisees—men who lived in the strength of a fellowship that had behind it the greatest religious tradition in all the world, but who, because they trusted more to their tradition than to the God who inspired it, were unable to recognise the still further call of God when it came to them.”
“It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of merrymaking, not sexual love, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest disturbances take possession of the soul.”
“Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality.”
“This science explains to us the meaning of terms, the nature of predication, and the law of consistency and contradiction; secondly, a thorough knowledge of the facts of nature relieves us of the burden of superstition, frees us from fear of death, and shields us against the disturbing effects of ignorance, which is often in itself a cause of terrifying apprehensions;”
“No one who is not a Christian in spirit can perform the Christian act; and the Sermon on the Mount is not a code of rules to be mechanically followed; it is the description of the life which any man will spontaneously lead when once the Spirit of Christ has taken complete possession of his heart.”
“to lift a man by education from one social stratum to another is to expose him to a terrible temptation—the temptation to despise his own people.”
“I am quite sure that the Communion is just the place where we need to be divided until our unity is real.”
“The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child's home.”
“Liberty, in so far as it is of any value, always means self-control in both the senses of that term: in the sense that we are only controlled by ourselves, and also in the sense that by ourselves we are controlled, and that every part of our nature is subservient to the purpose to which our whole nature is given.”
“One who faces his own failures is steadily advancing on the pilgrim's way.”
“The source of humility is the habit of realizing the presence of God.”
topics: Humility
“Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself one way or the other at all.”
topics: Humility
“My worth is what I am worth to God; and that is a marvelous great deal, for Christ died for me. Thus, incidentally, what gives to each of us His highest worth gives the same worth to everyone; in all that matters most are we equal.”
topics: Grace
“Contentment with the divine will is the best remedy we can apply to misfortunes.”
topics: Contentment
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William Temple was a priest in the Church of England. He served as Bishop of Manchester (1921–29), Archbishop of York (1929–42), and Archbishop of Canterbury (1942–44).
A renowned teacher and preacher, Temple is perhaps best known for his 1942 book Christianity and Social Order, which set out an Anglican social theology and a vision for what would constitute a just post-war society. Also in 1942, with Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz, Temple jointly founded the Council of Christians and Jews to combat anti-Jewish bigotry.