Top 148 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Kingsley

A man may learn from his Bible to be a more thorough gentleman than if he had been brought up in all the drawing-rooms in London.

Have thy tools ready. God will find thee work.

We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable's handbook, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they are overloaded.

It is only the great hearted who can be true friends. The mean and cowardly, Can never know what true friendship means.

Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know.

Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog its day.

There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.

There is a great deal of human nature in man.

He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.

Do noble things, not dream them all day long.

All we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

Some say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth.

The world goes up and the world goes down, the sunshine follows the rain; and yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown can never come over again.

Feelings are like chemicals, the more you analyze them the worse they smell.

Pain is no evil, unless it conquers us.

A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend, one human soul whom we can trust utterly, who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults.

Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book.

There's no use doing a kindness if you do it a day too late.

Do you feel that you have lost your way in life? Then God Himself will show you your way. Are you utterly helpless, worn out, body and soul? Then God's eternal love is ready and willing to help you up, and revive you. Are you wearied with doubts and terrors? Then God's eternal light is ready to show you your way; God's eternal peace ready to give you peace. Do you feel yourself full of sins and faults? Then take heart; for God's unchangeable will is, to take away those sins, and purge you from those faults.

We have used the Bible as if it was a mere special constable's handbook — an opium-dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded — a mere book to keep the poor in order.

Have charity; have patience; have mercy. Never bring a human being, however silly, ignorant, or weak--above all, any little child--to shame and confusion of face. Never by petulance, by suspicion, by ridicule, even by selfish and silly haste--never, above all, by indulging in the devilish pleasure of a sneer--crush what is finest and rouse up what is coarsest in the heart of any fellow-creature.

Life is too short for mean anxieties.

Madame Nature allows no dangerous classes, in the modern sense. She has, doubtless for some wise reason, no mercy for the weak. She rewards each organism according to its works; and if anything grows too weak or stupid to take care of itself, she gives it its due deserts by letting it die and disappear.

Nothing is so infectious as example.

Nature's deepest laws, her only true laws, are her invisible ones.

A blessed thing it is to have a friend; one human soul whom we can trust utterly; who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults; who will speak the honest truth to us, while the world flatters us to our face, and laughs at us behind our back; who will give us counsel and reproof in a day of prosperity and self-conceit; but who, again, will comfort and encourage us in days of difficulty and sorrow, when the world leaves us alone to fight our own battle as we can.

And how high is Christ's cross? As high as the highest heaven, and the throne of God, and the bosom of the Father that bosom out of which forever proceed all created things. Ay, as high as the highest heaven! for if you will receive it when Christ hung upon the cross, heaven came down on earth, and earth ascended into heaven.

The men whom I have seen succeed best in life always have been cheerful and hopeful men; who went about their business with a smile on their faces; and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men; facing rough and smooth alike as it came.

Tis the hard grey weather Breeds hard English men.

Better is old wine than new, and old friends like-wise.

Toil is the true knight's pastime.

Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message from the dead - from human souls we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away. And yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, arouse us, terrify us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.

If "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers' hands

Cheerfulness is full of significance: it suggests good health, a clear conscience, and a soul at peace with all human nature.

Do today's duty, fight to-day's temptation; and do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things which you cannot see, and could not understand if you saw them.

Music. – There is something very wonderful in music. Words are wonderful enough: but music is even more wonderful. It speaks not to our thoughts as words do: it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. Music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble feelings into us; it melts us to tears, we know not how: – it is a language by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words; just as divine, just as blessed.

I do not want merely to possess a faith, I want a faith that possesses me.

Did it ever strike you that goodness is not merely a beautiful thing, but by far the most beautiful thing in the whole world? So that nothing is to be compared for value with goodness; that riches, honor, power, pleasure, learning, the whole world and all in it, are not worth having in comparison with being good; and the utterly best thing for a person is to be good, even though they were never to be rewarded for it.

If you want to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you and what people think of you.

Look at the bow in the cloud, in the very rain itself. That is a sign that the sun, though you cannot see it, is shining still -- that up above beyond the cloud is still sunlight and warmth and cloudless blue sky.

Friendship is like a glass ornament, once it is broken it can rarely be put back together exactly the same way.

You must not talk about 'ain't and can't' when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean.

This is the feeling that gives a man true courage-the feeling that he has a work to do at all costs; the sense of duty.

I hope that my children, at least, if not I myself, will see the day when ignorance of the primary laws and facts of science will be looked upon as a defect only second to ignorance of the primary laws of religion and morality.

The most wonderful and the strongest things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see.

Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world? People call them Pterodactyles: but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist.

The health of a church depends not merely on the creed which it professes, not even on the wisdom and holiness of a few great ecclesiastics, but on the faith and virtue of its individual members.

Let us ask ourselves seriously and honestly, 'What do I believe after all? What manner of man am I after all? What sort of show would I make after all, if the people around me knew my heart and all my secret thoughts?" What sort of show then do I already make in the sight of Almighty God, who sees every man exactly as he is?'

Make it a rule and pray to God to help you keep it . . . never, if possible, to lie down at night without being able to say "I have made one human being at least a little wiser, a little happier, or a little better this day."

Beauty is God's handwriting — a wayside sacrament; welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower, and thank for it Him.

Every duty which is bidden to wait returns with seven fresh duties at its back.

Music has been called the speech of the angels; I will go farther and call it the speech of God Himself.

If you wish to be like a little child, study what a little child could understand — nature; and do what a little child could do — love.

Whatever may be the mysteries of life and death, there is one mystery which the cross of Christ reveals to us, and that is the infinite and absolute goodness of God. Let all the rest remain a mystery so long as the mystery of the cross of Christ gives us faith for all the rest.

Music is a sacred, a divine, a God-like thing, and was given to man by Christ to lift our hearts up to God, and make us feel something of the glory and beauty of God, and of all which God has made.

Nothing like one honest look, one honest thought of Christ upon His cross. That tells us how much He has been through, how much He endured, how much He conquered, how much God loved us, who spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us. Dare we doubt such a God? Dare we murmur against such a God?

If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose.

I go at what I have to do as if there were nothing else in the world for me to do.

I have fought my fight, I have lived my life, I have drunk my share of wine; From Trier to Coln there was never a knight Led a merrier life than mine.