Henry Drummond Quotes

       Henry Drummond
       1786-1890
      
       Henry Drummond, English banker, politician and writer, best known as one of the founders of the Catholic Apostolic or Irvingite Church, was born at the Grange, near Alresford, Hampshire.
      
       He entered Parliament in 1810, and took an active interest from the first in nearly all departments of politics. Thoroughly independent and often eccentric in his views, he yet acted generally with the Conservative party. His speeches were often almost inaudible but were generally lucid and informing, and on occasion caustic and severe.
      
       From 1847 until his death he represented West Surrey in parliament. Drummond took a deep interest in religious subjects, and published numerous books and pamphlets on such questions as the interpretation of prophecy, the circulation of the Apocrypha and the principles of Christianity. These attracted considerable attention.

Is life not full of opportunities for learning love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal lesson for us all is how better we can love.     Topics: Achievement, Life, Learning Unless a man undertakes more than he possibly can do, he will never do all he can do.     Topics: Achievement No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper.     Topics: Anger     Source: The Greatest Thing in the World. A want of patience, a want of kindness, a want of generosity, a want of courtesy, a want of unselfishness, are all instantaneously symbolized in one flash of Temper.     Topics: Anger     Source: The Greatest Thing in the World. Christ's protest is not against work, but against anxious thought.     Topics: Anxiety     Source: Natural Law, Growth, p. 136. Neglect does more for the soul than make it miss salvation. It despoils it of its capacity for salvation.     Topics: Apathy     Source: Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 110. Men tell us sometimes there is no such thing as an atheist. There must be. There are some men to whom it is true that there is no God. They cannot see God because they have no eye. They have only an abortive organ, atrophied by neglect.     Topics: Atheism     Source: Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 115. What is the essential difference between the Christian and the not-a-Christian, between the spiritual beauty and the moral beauty? It is the distinction between the Organic and the Inorganic. Moral beauty is the product of the natural man, spiritual beauty of the spiritual man.     Topics: Beauty     Source: Natural Law, p. 380. It is more necessary for us to be active than to be orthodox. To be orthodox is what we wish to be, but we can only truly reach it by being honest, by being original, by seeing with our own eyes, by believing with our own heart.     Topics: Believing     Source: Natural Law. p. 364. Not more certain is it that it is something outside the thermometer that produces a change in the thermometer, than it is something outside the soul of man that produces a moral change upon him. That he must be susceptible to that change, that he must be a party to it, goes without saying; but that neither his aptitude nor his will can produce it is equally certain.     Topics: Change     Source: The Changed Life, p. 20. The change we have been striving after is not to be produced by any more striving after. It is to be wrought upon us by the moulding of hands beyond our own. As the branch ascends, and the bud bursts, and the fruit reddens under the cooperation of influences from the outside air, so man rises to the higher stature under invisible pressures from without.     Topics: Change     Source: The Changed Life, p. 21. Strength of character may be learned at work, but beauty of character is learned at home.     Topics: Character, Home, Work