English historian, politician & writer (1834-1902)
Mediocrity not unfrequently wins the honors and emoluments that talent often aspires to in vain. It is the great golden rule of cautious prudence, and sure, undeviating wisdom. Its days abound with peace, and its nights with sweet repose. While the great and lofty are hazarding their safety in the clouds, and inhaling attenuated vapors, the humble but prudent advocates of mediocrity securely rest upon the earth, not where grow the reeds and flowers, but amidst harvest fields and well-stored granaries.
LORD ACTON
Acton; Or, The Circle of Life
The inner reality of history is so unlike the back of the cards, and it takes so long to get at it, which does not prevent us from disbelieving what is current as history, but makes us wish to sift it, and dig through mud to solid foundations.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, September 21, 1880
There is a grain of truth in the notion that the force that creates, and sustains in a crisis, is not quite the same that is wanted in time of prose to continue and to preserve; or in other words, that creative power makes a great consumptive of party resources.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 1, 1880
It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 9, 1880
I want to be vigilant not to resent, but to pursue the work of disarming resentment.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, May 23, 1880
It was manifest that all persons who had learned that political science is an affair of conscience rather than of might or expediency, must regard their adversaries as men without principle, that the controversy between them would perpetually involve morality, and could not be governed by the plea of good intentions which softens down the asperities of religious strife. Nearly all the greatest men of the seventeenth century repudiated the innovation. In the eighteenth, the two ideas of Grotius, that there are certain political truths by which every state and every interest must stand or fall, and that society is knit together by a series of real and hypothetical contracts, became, in other hands, the lever that displaced the world. When, by what seemed the operation of an irresistible and constant law, royalty had prevailed over all enemies and all competitors, it became a religion. Its ancient rivals, the baron and the prelate, figured as supporters by its side.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Christianity
I am ashamed to tell you how much I should like to hear from you, because you will suspect that I only want a supplement to the Times, or a later edition of the Echo.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, March 15, 1880
From the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Christianity
The Liberal party is held together, not by forces within, but by a force above it. It consists, like the being that declined a chair, of two wings and a head.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, July 10, 1880
In a doctrine so simple, consistency is no merit.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, December 14, 1880
Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
We prefer to avoid men, and to shun the world, in order that we may seek in retirement, the only peace that is possessing, the only happiness which is left us to enjoy.
LORD ACTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
The barbarians, who possessed no books, no secular knowledge, no education, except in the schools of the clergy, and who had scarcely acquired the rudiments of religious instruction, turned with childlike attachment to men whose minds were stored with the knowledge of Scripture, of Cicero, of St. Augustine; and in the scanty world of their ideas, the Church was felt to be something infinitely vaster, stronger, holier than their newly founded States.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Christianity
Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned -- the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity