William Temple > Quotes

“Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose--all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.”
― William Temple

“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.”
― William Temple, Nature, Man and God

“Religion is what you do with your solitude.”
― William Temple

“The most influential of all educational factor is the conversation in a child's home.”
― William Temple

“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. . . . The humility which consists in being a great deal occupied about yourself, and saying you are of little worth, is not Christian humility. It is one form of self-occupation and a very poor and futile one at that.”
― William Temple

“It is a great mistake to think that God is chiefly concerned with our being religious.”
― William Temple

“The best rules to form a young man, are, to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it.”
― William Temple

“Art is the effort to appreciate and express the God who is its Beauty.”
― William Temple, Fellowship with God

“Little things are little things; but faithfulness in little things is a very great thing.”
― William Temple, Fellowship with God

“I shall conclude with a saying of Alponsus, surnamed the Wise, King of Aragon - that among so many things as are by men possessed or pursued in the course of their lives, all the rest are baubles, besides old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to read!”
― William Temple, Essays Of Sir William Temple

“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.”
― William Temple, Church and Nation : The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15

“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.”
― William Temple, Church and Nation : The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15

“The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit.”
― William Temple

“Coincidenţele sunt mai frecvente atunci când ne rugăm.”
― William Temple

“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 at all”
― William Temple

“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.”
― William Temple, Church and Nation : The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15

“I am quite sure that the Communion is just the place where we need to be divided until our unity is real.”
― William Temple, Church and Nation : The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15

“Surely God will first require, and help me to form, a character worthy to serve Him, and then appoint me my task. No; in point of fact it is only through service that such a character could be formed. Canon Peter Green has often pointed out that Christ did not first make His disciples saints and then give them work to do; He gave them work to do, and as they did it other people (though not themselves) perceived that they were becoming saints.”
― William Temple, Readings in St John's Gospel: First and Second Series

“In our worship we find for the most part what we expect to find.”
― William Temple, Church and Nation : The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15

“Both for perplexity and for dulled conscience the remedy is the same; sincere and spiritual worship. For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose - and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin. Yes - worship in spirit and truth is the way to the solution of perplexity and to the liberation from sin.”
― William Temple, Readings in St John's Gospel: First and Second Series

“Your religion is what you do with your solitude.”
― William Temple

“The first task of the Church is to inspire the State, which after all very largely consists of the same persons as itself, with the desire to combat the evil; and the second is to counteract the one great difficulty which the State experiences. When the State takes up such work as this, there is one thing which we all fear: "Officialism." What is "Officialism"? Simply lack of love; nothing else in the world. It consists in treating people as "cases," according to rules and red tape, instead of treating them as individuals;”
― William Temple, Church and Nation : The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15

“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.”
― William Temple, Church and Nation : The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15

“The first requirement of personality is always freedom—”
― William Temple, Church and Nation : The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15