“There is an unspeakable difference between religion having shaped a country and a country having shaped its religion.”

Original: Y mae gwahaniaeth annrhaethol rhwng crefydd wedi llunio gwlad, a gwlad wedi llunio crefydd. — Distinguishing principles that shape society from beliefs shaped for convenience · Sermon, Ceisio Teyrnas Dduw, July 1886 (Welsh)

• Faith
• Society
• Truth

“God's kingdom first, the kingdoms of the world second. Religion will not bear being mixed with such things; unless it is first, chief and foremost, it will do nothing at all.”

Original: Teyrnas Dduw yn gyntaf, teyrnasoedd y byd yn ail. Chymer crefydd ddim o'i chymysgu â phethau fel hyn, os na chaiff hi fod yn gyntaf, yn bennaf, ym mlaenaf, wna hi ddim o gwbl. — Arguing that genuine faith cannot merely be fitted around worldly priorities · Sermon, Ceisio Teyrnas Dduw, July 1886 (Welsh)

• Faith
• Truth

“There is reason to fear that far too much preaching concerns distant things: old history, people long buried, the Jews, while our own congregations go unnoticed.”

Original: Y mae lle i ofni fod llawer iawn gormod o bregethu pell, pregethu hen hanes, pregethu am hen bobl wedi eu claddu, pregethu am yr Iddewon,—a gadael ein cynulleidfaoedd ein hunain yn ddisylw. — Warning against discussing distant faults while ignoring immediate human needs · Sermon, Ceisio Teyrnas Dduw, July 1886 (Welsh)

• Community
• Faith
• Truth

“A sermon to meet his people, Jews and disciples. A sermon to meet those who were there, not those who were absent.”

Original: Pregeth i gwrdd ei bobl—Iddewon a disgyblion. Pregeth i gwrdd â'r rhai oedd yno, nid i gwrdd â'r rhai absennol. — Insisting that speech should address the people actually present · Sermon, Ceisio Teyrnas Dduw, July 1886 (Welsh)

• Faith
• Truth

“Preaching is not a craft, but ardent conviction breaking out in fiery eloquence.”

Original: Nid crefft yw pregethu, ond argyhoeddiad brwd yn torri allan yn hyawdledd tanllyd. — Describing true preaching as conviction transformed into eloquence · Address, Y Paratoad Goreu ar Gyfer y Weinidogaeth, 1895 (Welsh)

• Art
• Faith
• Truth

“This is valuable knowledge for a young man setting out to live by the principle of truth; it is knowledge that cannot be found in a book.”

Original: Dyma wybodaeth werthfawr i fachgen ifanc yn myned i fyw ar yr egwyddor wiroddol; dyma wybodaeth nad yw i'w chael mewn llyfr. — Distinguishing lived understanding from knowledge acquired through books · Address, Y Paratoad Goreu ar Gyfer y Weinidogaeth, 1895 (Welsh)

• Education
• Truth

“Was not that great nonsense?”

A characteristically irreverent response to a clergyman's warning about damnation, preserved in a later biographical account · Conversation recalled in James Paterson, The Contemporaries of Burns, 1840

• Faith
• Truth

“No man with a sense of humour could have exposed himself to those occasionally just criticisms of the almost comic positions of some of his characters, verging on coarseness.”

Arguing that humour can serve as a form of artistic self-criticism · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth

“I do not conceive that any criticism, with such liveliness and liberty as makes criticism at all amusing, would be suitable at a meeting of this kind.”

Treating lively criticism as something requiring freedom as well as judgement · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Art
• Truth

“For this prominent problem of the genius of Gray every serious critic will attempt his own solution.”

Seeing criticism as an individual search for the nature of genius · Speech, Gray Memorial unveiling, Cambridge, 26 May 1885

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth

“It is to this very restriction that the merit and, so to say, influence of the work is especially due.”

Suggesting that creative limitations can strengthen a work · Memorial essay, Henry Bright

• Art
• Truth

“He scrupulously avoided making these extraneous occupations any excuse for a relaxation of official duty.”

Insisting that literary interests need not excuse neglected responsibilities · Memorial essay, Henry Bright

• Art
• Truth

“The list of our Society may include profounder scholars and men of larger views and more general sympathies, but no better friend or more conscientious and accomplished English gentleman than Edward Cheney.”

Putting friendship and character above intellectual distinction · Memorial essay, Edward Cheney

• Friendship
• Truth

“They never wrote except on matters which they understood.”

Valuing knowledge grounded in genuine understanding · Memorial essay, Edward Cheney

• Art
• Truth

“The great desire of a good citizen should be to fill up, as far as possible, the gulfs that separate one set of Englishmen from another.”

Presenting civic life as a work of bridging social divisions · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Friendship
• Hope
• Truth

“Though this education had been carried on in a somewhat abnormal fashion, by conversation rather than by books, it was not, in my judgment, any the worse on that account.”

Recognising conversation as a genuine form of education · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Friendship
• Truth

“There were others equally good in their way, of which I remember the outlines, but as they are longer and more elaborate, I could only quote them imperfectly, and, that being so, it is better not to quote them at all.”

Preferring omission to an inaccurate quotation · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Memory
• Truth

“If I failed to teach, I gathered out of my failure some instruction for myself, which he never managed to do.”

Finding a lesson for himself in a failed attempt to teach · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Childhood
• Truth

“If the grief is only a half grief, conjured up by the imagination to play with like a toy, then, in my opinion, the bard had better hold his tongue.”

Rejecting manufactured grief as a basis for poetic utterance · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Death
• Poetry
• Truth

“Definitions of poetry indeed are always more or less unintelligible.”

Wryly resisting attempts to define poetry too neatly · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Poetry
• Truth

“Now, in my opinion, the critic ought not to be over-fastidious, but to take broad, bold, and tolerant views of whatever comes under his ken.”

Calling for criticism broad enough to recognise different kinds of merit · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Art
• Truth

“An average English intellect requires time to take in and digest what you say to it.”

Arguing that listeners need time to absorb spoken thought · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Art
• Truth

“I write from memory alone; and of memory the principal fountain-head is, and must be, the association of ideas.”

Treating association as the natural engine of autobiographical memory · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Memory
• Truth

“It has always been my belief that a more living knowledge of the past is to be obtained by studying the State Trials than by poring over formal narrations, however highly esteemed.”

Arguing that vivid primary records can bring the past to life · Reminiscences and Opinions, 1886

• Memory
• Time
• Truth