The Hidden Stream (1952). London: Burns Oates, p. 139.
Ronald Knox:
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Famous Ronald Knox Quotes
“A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
Definition of a baby, quoted by Colin Blakemore in his 1976 Reith Lectures, Mechanics of the Mind
The earliest print occurrence is credited to Elizabeth I. Adamson in the July 1937 issue of Reader's Digest, according to Quote Investigator https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/01/10/baby/#note-15186-10.
Disputed
The Hidden Stream (1952). London: Burns Oates, p. 142.
Knox alludes to John Robert Seeley's much-quoted statement in The Expansion of England (1883) that "we seem, as it were, to have conquered half the world in a fit of absence of mind".
“If you have a sloppy religion you get a sloppy atheism.”
Quoted in Penelope Fitzgerald, The Knox Brothers (1977), Ch. IV
Let Dons Delight (1939), Note on Chapter 8
Describing a discussion following the presentation of a paper at a student society.
Ronald Knox Quotes
“Comparative religion is an admirable recipe for making people comparatively religious.”
The Hidden Stream (1952). London: Burns Oates, p. 105
Often misquoted as "The study of comparative religions is the best way to become comparatively religious."
Context: I suppose there has been no subtler attack upon the Christian faith devised by its enemies in these last hundred years than the attack made in the name of "comparative religion". If you pick up a book on "Atonement", and plough your way through ideas of atonement among primitive tribes, pagan ideas of atonement, Jewish ideas of atonement, Christian ideas of atonement, you will find by the end of it that atonement, for the author's mind, has ceased to have any meaning. And he has been successful, in so far as he has managed to infect your mind with the wooliness which is the leading characteristic of his own. Comparative religion is an admirable recipe for making people comparatively religious.
Langford Reed, The Complete Limerick Book (1924)
The topic of this limerick and the following one is George Berkeley's philosophical principle, "To be is to be perceived".
God and the Atom (1945). London: Sheed & Ward, pp. 53–54
“When suave politeness, temp'ring bigot zeal
Corrected I believe to One does feel.”
"Absolute and Abitofhell", Oxford Magazine, October 1913
“He who travels in the Barque of Peter had better not look too closely into the engine room.”
Reply when asked why he did not visit Rome, quoted in Penelope Fitzgerald, The Knox Brothers (1977)
Let Dons Delight (1939), Chapter 8
