“So men believe
And worship what they know not, nor receive
Delight from.”
Book the Second
Sordello (1840)
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Robert Browning 179
English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era 1812–1889Related quotes
“I do not believe in infallible men, nor in an infallible church, nor in an infallible book”
Defence at his Heresy Trial
“What most men do not know - and if they could know it, why could they be called on to believe it?”
Is that this blue sky, though illusory as an optical error and belied by the vision of interplanetary space, is nonetheless an adequate reflection of the Heaven of the Angels and the Blessed and that therefore, despite everything, it is this blue mirage, flecked with silver clouds, that is right and will have the final say; to be astonished at this amounts to admitting that it is by chance that we are here on earth and see the sky as we do.
Understanding Islam (1963)
Source: Knots Untied (1877), Ch. XVII: "The Fallibility of Ministers", p. 383
“What you receive is directly connected to what you believe”
Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential
“Men are to be estimated, not from what they know, but from what they are able to perform”
PART I, SECTION V.
An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)
Lines on his Promised Pension; reported in Thomas Fuller, Worthies of England, vol ii, page 379, and in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)