“Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.”

Interview tapes Cotton & Mullineux

James Harrington in The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656)
Misattributed

De pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis declamatio (1529), translated by Beert C. Verstraete as On Education for Children, in The Erasmus Reader (University of Toronto Press: 1990), p. 73

Quoted in "Donald Trump Claims Nobody Has Done More 'for Religion Itself' Than Him" https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-claims-nobody-has-done-more-religion-itself-him-1635036, Newsweek, 2 October 2021
2021, October 2021

Preface (Scribner edition, 1872) <!-- New York, Scribner pp xxv - xxvi -->
Chips from a German Workshop (1866)
Context: How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be; unless he may show that. like all other religions, Christianity, too, has had its history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the Christianity of the Middle Ages, that the Christianity of the MiddIe Ages was not that of the early Councils, that the Christianity of the early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and "that what has been said by Christ, that alone was weII said?"

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 106.

Source: "Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 6: The Vocation of Eloquence
Context: Freedom has nothing to do with lack of training; it can only be the product of training. You're not free to move unless you've learned to walk, and not free to play the piano unless you practise. Nobody is capable of free speech unless he knows how to use the language, and such knowledge is not a gift: it has to be learned and worked at.

The Philosophy of Antoninus