"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.
“Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the tablets of eternity.”
James Anthony Froude, in the lecture "The Science of History" (5 February 1864); published in Representative Essays (1885) by George Haven Putnam, p. 274; Lord Acton quoted Froude in an address "The Study of History" (11 June 1895) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1906acton.html, which led to this being widely attributed 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.
Misattributed
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John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton 112
British politician and historian 1834–1902Related quotes
as quoted in the exhibition, 'Expressionisten, die Avantgarde in Deutschland 1905 - 1920', catalog Nationalgalerie Berlin, DDR, 1986, p. 109
1900s - 1920s
“What one means one day, you know, one may not mean the next. Circumstances change, opinions alter.”
Source: Northanger Abbey
Thomas Taylor (Tr.) Political fragments of Archytas, Charondas, Zaleucus, and other Ancient Pythagoreans, preserved by Stobæus; and also, Ethical Fragments of Pierocles http://books.google.com/books?id=Kx4PAQAAMAAJ (1822)
page 438
Last lines of the documentary film series " The National Parks: America's Best Idea http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/" by Ken Burns.
John of the Mountains, 1938
Part I, Ch. 9
Source: To the Lighthouse (1927)
Context: Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscription on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs Ramsay's knee.
From [Boston Female Anti-slavery Society, Annual Report of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, https://books.google.com/books?id=W5I5AQAAMAAJ, 1836, The Society, 30], as quoted in [Dell, Diana, Memorable Quotations: American Women Writers of the Past, https://books.google.com/books?id=eM3IWooc_zIC, December 2000, iUniverse, 978-0-595-16230-7, 73]