Thomas Hughes > Quotes

“Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends,for it is one of God's best gifts.”
― Thomas Hughes

“He who has conquered his own coward spirit has conquered the whole outward world;”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one's self and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.”
― Thomas Hughes

“I want to leave behind me the name of a fellow who never bullied a little boy, or turned his back on a big one.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“...so bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong; and that if you see man or boy striving earnestly on the weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him. If you can't join him and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight and suffer for....”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“However, you'll all find, if you haven't found it out already, that a time comes in every human friendship when you must go down into the depths of yourself, and lay bare what is there to your friend, and wait in fear for his answer.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“Don't be in a hurry about finding your work in the world for yourself—you are not old enough to judge for yourself yet; but just look about you in the place you find yourself in, and try to make things a little better and honester there.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are getting into the upper forms. Now is the time in all your lives, probably, when you may have more wide influence for good or evil on the society you live in than you ever can have again.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“Berbahagialah orang yang berbakat menjalin persahabatan, karena hal itu merupakan salah satu karunia Tuhan yang terbaik.
Menjalin persahabatan meliputi banyak kemampuan, terutama untuk tidak mementingkan diri sendiri dan untuk menghargai keluhuran jiwa serta daya tarik orang lain.”
― Thomas Hughes

“A character for steadiness once gone is not easily recovered”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“You are no longer a boy, and one of the first duties which a man owes to his friends and to society is to live within his income.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford

“Don't be led away to think this part of the world important and that unimportant. Every corner of the world is important. No man knows whether this part or that is most so, but every man may do some honest work in his own corner.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“Boyishness—by which I mean animal life in its fullest measure, good nature and honest impulses, hatred of injustice and meanness, and thoughtlessness enough to sink a three-decker.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“Blessed is the man who has the gift of making friends; for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of oneself, and seeing and appreciating whatever is noble and living in another man.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford

“At that moment his soul is fuller of the tomb and him who lies there than of the altar and Him of whom it speaks. Such stages have to be gone through, I believe, by all young and brave souls, who must win their way through hero-worship to the worship of Him who is the King and Lord of heroes.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“The one single use of things which we call our own is that they might be his who hath need of them.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“Life isn't all beer and skittles; but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman's education.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“We listened, as all boys in their better moods will listen (ay, and men too for the matter of that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all his heart and soul and strength, striving against whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but the warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us and by our sides, and calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“Anyone who takes a decided line in certain matters, is sure to lead all the rest.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford

“Class amusements, be they for Dukes or plow-boys, always become nuisances and curses to a country. The true charm of cricket and hunting is that they are still, more or less sociable and universal; There's a place for every man who will come and take his part.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Rugby

“The astonishment soon passed off, the scales seemed to drop from his eyes, and the book became at once and for ever to him the great human and divine book, and the men and women, whom he had looked upon as something quite different from himself, became his friends and counsellors.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

“For some days after his return home—in fact, until his friend's arrival, Tom was thoroughly beaten down and wretched, notwithstanding his efforts to look hopefully forward, and keep up his spirits. His usual occupations were utterly distasteful to him; and, instead of occupying himself, he sat brooding over his late misfortune, and hopelessly puzzling his head as to what he could do to set matters right. The conviction in which he always landed was that there was nothing to be done, and that he was a desolate and blighted being, deserted of gods and men.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford

“The trout fisher, like the landscape painter, haunts the loveliest places of the earth, and haunts them alone. Solitude and his own thoughts—he must be on the best terms with all of these; and he who can take kindly the largest allowance of these is likely to be the kindliest and truest with his fellow men.”
― Thomas Hughes

“But I have forgotten to tell you how I came into the world, and am telling you my father's story instead of my own. You seem to like hearing about it though, and you can't understand one without the other.”
― Thomas Hughes

“O young England! young England! you who are born into these racing railroad times, when there's a Great Exhibition, or some monster sight, every year, and you can get over a couple of thousand miles of ground for three pound ten in a five-weeks' holiday, why don't you know more of your own birthplaces?”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days : Original illustrations - Annotated - Classic Edition

“A landing place is a famous thing, but it is only enjoyable for a time by any mortal who deserves one at all.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford

“While one was an undergraduate, one could feel virtuous and indignant at the vices of Oxford, at least at those which one did not indulge in, particularly at the flunkeyism and money-worship which are our most prevalent and disgraceful sins. But when one is a fellow it is quite another affair. They become a sore burthen then, enough to break one's heart.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford

“After a sharp inward struggle, he concluded to stay and see it out. He should despise himself, more than he cared to face, if he gave in now.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford

“The world might be a better world without fighting, for anything I know, but it wouldn’t be our world; and therefore I am dead against crying peace when there is no peace, and isn’t meant to be.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days

“I don't think much of you yet—I wish I could—though you do go talking and lecturing up and down the country to crowded audiences, and are busy with all sorts of philanthropic intellectualism, and circulating libraries and museums, and Heaven only knows what besides, and try to make us think, through newspaper reports, that you are, even as we, of the working classes. But bless your hearts, we “ain't so green,” though lots of us of all sorts toady you enough certainly, and try to make you think so.

I'll tell you what to do now: instead of all this trumpeting and fuss, which is only the old parliamentary-majority dodge over again, just you go, each of you (you've plenty of time for it, if you'll only give up t'other line), and quietly make three or four friends—real friends—among us. You'll find a little trouble in getting at the right sort, because such birds don't come lightly to your lure; but found they may be. Take, say, two out of the professions, lawyer, parson, doctor—which you will; one out of trade; and three or four out of the working classes—tailors, engineers, carpenters, engravers. There's plenty of choice. Let them be men of your own ages, mind, and ask them to your homes; introduce them to your wives and sisters, and get introduced to theirs; give them good dinners, and talk to them about what is really at the bottom of your hearts; and box, and run, and row with them, when you have a chance. Do all this honestly as man to man, and by the time you come to ride old John, you'll be able to do something more than sit on his back, and may feel his mouth with some stronger bridle than a red-tape one.

Ah, if you only would! But you have got too far out of the right rut, I fear. Too much over-civilization, and the deceitfulness of riches. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. More's the pity. I never came across but two of you who could value a man wholly and solely for what was in him—who thought themselves verily and indeed of the same flesh and blood as John Jones the attorney's clerk, and Bill Smith the costermonger, and could act as if they thought so.”
― Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays