“Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.”

"The Science of History", (5 February 1864); lecture published in Representative Essays (1885) by George Haven Putnam, p. 274; Lord Acton quoted the first sentence of this statement in an address "The Study Of History" (11 June 1895) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1906acton.html, and it has often since been misattributed to him. The phrase has also sometimes been misquoted as: Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.
Context: Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last.

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James Anthony Froude 111
English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fras… 1818–1894

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