“The more we are in earnest as to feeling it, the less we are disposed to hold forth about it.”

Suggesting that sincere faith tends towards humility rather than display · Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, 1868

• Faith
• Truth

“It is much better for you that they should fail in obeying the greatest rule laid down by our Saviour, than that you should.”

Placing personal moral conduct above disappointment in other people · Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, 1868

• Faith
• Truth

“Gentlemen, my moral creed—which is a very wide and comprehensive one, and includes all sects and parties—is very easily summed up.”

Stressing an inclusive moral outlook beyond faction and denomination · Speech, 7 February 1842

• Faith
• Truth

“I was anxious to find, as the Professor has said, if I could, in evil things, that soul of goodness which the Creator has put in them.”

Seeking traces of goodness even amid cruelty and wrongdoing · Speech, Edinburgh, 25 June 1841

• Faith
• Hope
• Truth

“The universe, in its wholeness and its freedom, has become his spiritual home.”

Imagining freedom as a profound belonging within the whole universe. · Essay, The Flight of the Dragon (1911)

• Faith
• Nature

“Art is essentially a conquest of matter by the spirit.”

Expressing art as the transformation of material into spiritual form. · Essay, The Flight of the Dragon (1911)

• Art
• Faith

“Whatever mode of thinking is necessarily confined to one or two points of the mental compass may be true but is not Religious.”

Defining religious thought by breadth and compatibility with the whole mind · Unpublished notes, Poetry and Art

• Faith
• Truth

“The primary attributes of a perfect human Mind are, therefore, to Know, to Love, to Worship and to Order.”

A compact statement of Dobell's ideal faculties of mind · Lecture, Nature of Poetry, 1857

• Faith
• Love
• Truth

“All men are led to Heaven by their own loves; but these must first be sacrificed.”

Expressing Patmore's recurring belief that love must be transformed rather than extinguished · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta CVI

• Faith
• Love

“What a Lover sees in the Beloved is the projected shadow of his own potential beauty in the eyes of God.”

Interpreting romantic idealisation as a glimpse of unrealised spiritual beauty · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta XCVI

• Beauty
• Faith
• Love

“A dark, conspicuous, and insoluble enigma is the source of all love, and of the celestial decorum of the universe.”

Making mystery rather than explanation the foundation of love · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta XCV

• Faith
• Love

“The bliss of heaven, which many have attained here, is the synthesis of absolute content and infinite desire.”

Defining fulfilment as the coexistence of complete contentment and limitless desire · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta XCII

• Faith
• Joy

“Great contemplatives are infallible, so long as they only affirm. When they begin to prove, any fool can confute them.”

Distinguishing intuitive spiritual perception from attempts at formal demonstration · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta LXXIII

• Faith
• Truth

“That which you confess to-day, you shall perceive to-morrow.”

Suggesting that trust may precede understanding · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta LXIX

• Faith
• Hope
• Truth

“The more wild and incredible your desire the more willing and prompt God is in fulfilling it, if you will have it so.”

Celebrating spiritual aspiration that refuses to be limited by probability · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta LXIII

• Faith
• Hope

“Creation differs from subsistence only as the first leap of a fountain differs from its continuance.”

Using a vivid natural image to portray creation as a continuously sustained act · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta LII

• Faith
• Nature

“Divine favours are forced upon the Soul in proportion to her detachment from them.”

Expressing the mystical paradox that relinquishment makes reception possible · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta XLV

• Faith

“The sweetness even of self-denial wears with time, and becomes tediously easy.”

Noting how even difficult disciplines can become comfortable habits · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta XLIII

• Faith

“Men would never offend God, if they knew how ready He is to forgive them.”

Connecting moral transformation with confidence in forgiveness · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta XLII

• Faith
• Hope

“God usually answers our prayers according rather to the measure of His own magnificence than to that of our asking.”

Suggesting that fulfilment may exceed the limits of what people know how to request · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta XLI

• Faith
• Hope

“God loves the soul which desires perfection, as a Lover always does, that is as if she were already perfect.”

Presenting divine love as recognising the possibility of perfection before its achievement · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta XXXII

• Faith
• Love

“Ask abundantly, for the measure of your asking shall be that of your receiving.”

Encouraging largeness of hope rather than timid expectation · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta XXX

• Faith
• Hope

“Our thoughts and feelings are modifications of our spiritual substance, and the soul, as a phonograph, retains them all forever, to lie tacit or to be summoned at need.”

Imagining memory as a permanent recording within the soul · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta XXIX

• Faith
• Memory

“The promises of the Devil are kept to the letter and broken in the spirit; God's promises are commonly broken to the letter and fulfilled past all hope to the spirit.”

Contrasting superficial fulfilment with deeper and unexpected grace · The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, Aurea Dicta XVIII

• Faith
• Hope