Charles Kingsley > Quotes

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

“The most wonderful and the strongest things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby

“Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do which must be done, whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance, self-control, diligence, strength of will, content, and a hundred other virtues which the idle never know.”
― Charles Kingsley

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”
― Charles Kingsley

“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.”
― Charles Kingsley

“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.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“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.”
― Charles Kingsley

“Do as you would be done by.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“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.”
― Charles Kingsley

“Never, if possible, lie down at night without being able to say: I have made one human being at least a little wiser, or a little happier, or at least a little better this day.”
― Charles Kingsley

“Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever
One grand, sweet song.”
― Charles Kingsley

“Feelings are like chemicals, the more you analyze them the worse they smell.”
― Charles Kingsley

“It is not darkness you are going to, for God is Light. It is not lonely, for Christ is with you. It is not unknown country, for Christ is there.”
― Charles Kingsley

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful.  Beauty is God’s handwriting—a way-side sacrament; welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower, and thank Him for it, who is the Fountain of all loveliness, and drink it in simply and earnestly with all your eyes; it is a charmed draught, a cup of blessing.”
― Charles Kingsley, Daily Thoughts selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife

“‎"The men whom I have seen succeed best in life have always 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.”
― Charles Kingsley

“Every duty that is bidden to wait comes back with seven fresh duties at its back.”
― Charles Kingsley

“In fact, the fairies had turned him into a water-baby.
A water-baby?  You never heard of a water-baby.  Perhaps not.  That is the very reason why this story was written. 
(...)
"But there are no such things as water-babies."
How do you know that?  Have you been there to see?  And if you had been there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were none.  If Mr. Garth does not find a fox in Eversley Wood—as folks sometimes fear he never will—that does not prove that there are no such things as foxes.  And as is Eversley Wood to all the woods in England, so are the waters we know to all the waters in the world.  And no one has a right to say that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no water-babies existing; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies; and a thing which nobody ever did, or perhaps ever will do.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies: A Fairy Tale For a Land Baby

“There is nothing more wonderful than a book. It may be a message to us from the dead, from human souls we never saw who lived perhaps thousands of miles away, and yet these little sheets of paper speak to us, arouse us, teach us, open our hearts and in turn open their hearts to us like brothers. Without books, God is silent, justice dormant, philosophy lame.”
― Charles Kingsley

“Stop!" said the Irishwoman. "I have one more word for you both; for you will both see me again before all is over. Those that wish to be clean, clean they will be; and those that wish to be foul, foul they will be. Remember.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“And what was the song which she sang? Ah, my little man, I am too old to sing that song, and you too young to understand it.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“I tell you, those Spaniards are rank cowards, as all bullies are. They pray to a woman, the idolatrous rascals! and no wonder they fight like women.”
― Charles Kinglsey

“[...] his little whirl-about of a head was so full of the notion of going out to see the world, that it forgot her in five minutes: however, though his head forgot her, I am glad to say his heart did not.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“I want you to look and think. I want every one to look and think. Half the misery in the world comes first from not looking, and then from not thinking. And I do not want you to be miserable.”
― Charles Kingsley

“Setiap bangun tidur pagi, berterima kasihlah kepada Tuhan, karena anda memiliki sesuatu yang harus dikerjakan, entah pekerjaan itu anda sukai mau pun tidak.

Terpaksa bekerja dan bekerja sebaik-baiknya akan memelihara kesederhanaan anda, kemampuan mengendalikan diri, kerajinan, kegigihan, kepuasan, dan seratus kebajikan lain yang tidak dikenal oleh orang-orang yang berleha-leha.”
― Charles Kingsley

“Some people think that there are no fairies. But it is a wide world, and plenty of room in it for fairies, without people seeing them; unless, of course, they look in the right place.”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies

“Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book. A message to us 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, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.”
― Charles Kingsley

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful.  Beauty is God’s handwriting—a way-side sacrament; welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower, and thank Him for it, who is the Fountain of all loveliness, and drink it in simply and earnestly with all your eyes; it is a charmed draught, a cup of blessing. True Words to”
― Charles Kingsley, Daily Thoughts selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife

“...children always wake after they have slept exactly as long as is good for them..”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“A great man of science ... knows everything about everything, except why a hen's egg does not turn into a crocodile and two or three other little things."
http://diggingupthefuture.wordpress.com/”
― Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

“give the devil rope, and he will hang himself.”
― Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho!, or, the voyages and adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the county of Devon, in the reign of her most glorious majesty Queen Elizabeth