Charles Kingsley Quotes & Sayings

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

So give me the political economist, the sanitary reformer, the engineer; and take your saints and virgins, relics and miracles. The spinning-jenny and the railroad, Cunard's liners and the electric telegraph, are to me, if not to you, signs that we are, on some points at least, in harmony with the universe; that there is a mighty spirit working among us, who cannot be your anarchic and destroying Devil, and therefore may be the Ordering and Creating God. — 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

You are literally filled with the fruit of your own devices, with rats and mice and such small deer, paramecia, and entomostraceae, and kicking things with horrid names, which you see in microscopes at the Polytechnic, and rush home and call for brandy-without the water-stone, and gravel, and dyspepsia, and fragments of your own muscular tissue tinged with your own bile. — Charles Kingsley

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. — Charles Kingsley

Nothing that man ever invents will absolve him from the universal necessity of being good as God is good, righteous as God is righteous, and holy as God is holy. — Charles Kingsley

Pray over every truth; for though the renewed heart is not "desperately wicked," it is quite deceitful enough to become so, if God be forgotten a moment. — Charles Kingsley

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." — Charles Kingsley

O Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the sands o' Dee! — Charles Kingsley

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

Oh, don't hurt me!" cried Tom. "I only want to look at you; you are so handsome. — Charles Kingsley

How long would it take a school-inspector of average activity to tumble head over heels from London toYork? — Charles Kingsley

The righteousness which is by faith in Christ is a loving heart and a loving life, which every man will long to lead who believes really in Jesus Christ. — Charles Kingsley

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. — Charles Kingsley

Stick to the old truths and the old paths, and learn their di- vineness by sick-beds and in every-day work, and do not darken your mind with intellectual puzzles, which may breed disbelief, but can never breed vital religion or practical usefulness. — Charles Kingsley

if you do not know, reader, what a Fisher Hobbs is, you know nothing about pigs, and deserve no bacon for breakfast. — Charles Kingsley

[At the end of the story, its main character, Tom] is now a great man of science, and can plan railroads, and steam-engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth; and knows everything about everything, except why a hen's egg don't turn into a crocodile, and two or three other little things that no one will know till the coming of the Cocqcigrues. — Charles Kingsley

All who have travelled through the delicious scenery of North Devon must needs know the little white town of Bideford, which slopes upwards from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and many-arched old bridge, where salmon wait for Autumn floods, toward the pleasant upland on the west. — Charles Kingsley

Feelings are like chemicals, the more you analyze them the worse they smell. — 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 Invitation, To Tom Highes What we can we will be, Honest Englishmen. Do the work that's nearest, Though it's dull at whiles, Helping, when we meet them, Lame dogs over stiles. — Charles Kingsley

Toil is the true knight's pastime. — Charles Kingsley

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. — Charles Kingsley

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

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

Ay, marriage is the life-long miracle, The self-begetting wonder, daily fresh. — Charles Kingsley

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

There is something very wonderful about music. Words are wonderful enough; but music is even more wonderful. It speaks not to our thoughts as words do; it speaks through our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. Music soothes us, stirs us up, it puts noble feelings in us, it can make us cringe; and it can melt us to tears; and yet we have no idea how. It is a language by itself, just as perfect in its ways as speech, as words, just as divine, just as blessed. — Charles Kingsley

He was not only, I soon discovered, a water drinker, but a strict vegetarian, to which, perhaps, he owed a great deal of the almost preternatural clearness, volubility, and sensitiveness of mind. — Charles Kingsley

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. — Charles Kingsley

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

For to be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue. — Charles Kingsley

Pain is no evil, unless it conquers us. — Charles Kingsley

Do noble things, not dream them all day long. — Charles Kingsley

For science is ... like virtue, its own exceeding great reward. — Charles Kingsley

We ought to reverence books; to look on them as useful and mighty things. If they are good and true, whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade, law, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the maker of all things - the teacher of all truth. — Charles Kingsley

After all, there is such a thing as looking like a gentleman. There are men whose class no dirt or rags can hide, any more than they could Ulysses. I have seen such men in plenty among workmen, too; but, on the whole, the gentleman
by whom I do not mean just now the rich
have the superiority in that point. But not, please God, forever. Give us the same air, water, exercise, education, good society, and you will see whether this "haggardness," this "coarseness" (etc., for the list is too long to specify), be an accident, or a property, of the man of the people. — Charles Kingsley

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

So fleet the works of men, back to their earth again;Ancient and holy things fade like a dream. — Charles Kingsley

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

It's all in the day's work, as the huntsman said when the lion ate him. — Charles Kingsley

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. — Charles Kingsley

Duty
the command of heaven, the eldest voice of God. — Charles Kingsley

Have thy tools ready. God will find thee work. — 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

And no one has the 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 will ever do. But surely ... they would have put it into spirits, or into the Illustrated News, or perhaps cut it into two halves, poor dear little thing, and sent one to Professor Owen, and one to Professor Huxley, to see what they would each say about it. — Charles Kingsley

Because I believe in a God of absolute and unbounded love, therefore I believe in a loving anger of His which will and must devour and destroy all which is decayed, monstrous, abortive in His universe till all enemies shall be put under His feet, and God shall be all in all. — Charles Kingsley

Beauty is God's handwriting. Welcome it in every fair face, every fair day, every fair flower. — Charles Kingsley

There is a great deal of human nature in man. — Charles Kingsley

If thou art fighting against thy sins, so is God. On thy side is God who made all, and Christ who died for all and the Spirit who alone gives wisdom, purity, and nobleness. — Charles Kingsley

And now I'm old and going
I'm sure I can't tell where;
One comfort is, this world's so hard, I can't be worse off there — Charles Kingsley

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

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

You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature. You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do; and nobody knows; not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove, or any other of the great men whom good boys are taught to respect. They are very wise men; and you must listen respectfully to all they say: but even if they should say, which I am sure they never would, 'That cannot exist. That is contrary to nature,' you must wait a little, and see; for perhaps even they may be wrong. — Charles Kingsley

Give me something huge to fight, - and I should enjoy that - but why make me sweep the dust? — Charles Kingsley

Still the race of hero spirits pass the lamp from hand to hand. — Charles Kingsley

Three fishers went sailing away to the west,/ Away to the west as the sun went down. — Charles Kingsley

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

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? — Charles Kingsley

Nature's deepest laws, her own true laws, are her invisible ones. — Charles Kingsley

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

Are gods more ruthless than mortals? Have they no mercy for youth? no love for the souls who have loved them? — Charles Kingsley

How many serious family quarrels, marriages out of spite, and alterations of wills, might have been prevented by a gentle dose of blue pill!-What awful instances of chronic dyspepsia in the characters of Hamlet and Othello! Banish dyspepsia and spirituous liquors from society, and you have no crime, or at least so little that you would not consider it worth mentioning. — Charles Kingsley

Depend upon it, a man never experiences such pleasure or grief after fourteen years as he does before, unless in some cases, in his first lovemaking, when the sensation is new to him — Charles Kingsley

Mathematical knowledge is not-as all Cambridge men are surely aware-the result of any special gift. It is merely the development of those conceptions of form and number which every human being possesses; and any person of average intellect can make himself a fair mathematician if he will only pay continuous attention; in plain English, think enough about the subject. — 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

My friends, let us try to follow the Saviour's steps; let us remember all day long what it is to be men; that it is to have every one whom we meet for our brother in the sight of God; that it is this, never to meet anyone, however bad he may be, for whom we cannot say: "Christ died for that man, and Christ cares for him still. He is precious in God's eyes, and he shall be precious in mine also". — Charles Kingsley

Our wanton accidents take root, and grow To vaunt themselves God's laws. — Charles Kingsley

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. — Charles Kingsley

There will be no true freedom without virtue, no true science without religion, no true industry without the fear of God and love to your fellow citizens. — Charles Kingsley

Those clouds are angels' robes. — Charles Kingsley

Tis the hard grey weather Breeds hard English men. — Charles Kingsley

The Water Babies "Young and Old" When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away: Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day. — Charles Kingsley

[The] great fairy Science, who is likely to be queen of all the fairies for many a year to come, can only do you good, and never do you harm ... — Charles Kingsley

I do not see why we should not be as just to an ant as to a human being. — Charles Kingsley

[A]ll the ingenious men, and all the scientific men, and all the fanciful men, in the world, ... could never invent, if all their wits were boiled into one, anything so curious and so ridiculous as a lobster. — Charles Kingsley

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. — Charles Kingsley

No earnest thinker is a plagiarist pure and simple. He will never borrow from others that which he has not already, more or less, thought out for himself. — Charles Kingsley

I believe not only in "special providences," but in the whole universe as one infinite complexity of "special providences. — Charles Kingsley

Never trample on any soul though it may be lying in the veriest mire; for that last spark of self-respect is its only hope, its only chance; the last seed of a new and better life: the voice of God that whispers to it: You are not what you ought to be, and you are not what you can be. You are still God's child, still an immortal soul. You may rise yet. and fight a good fight yet, and be a man once more, after the likeness of God who made you, and Christ who died for you! — Charles Kingsley

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

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. — Charles Kingsley

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

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. — 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. — Charles Kingsley

Take comfort, and recollect however little you and I may know, God knows; He knows Himself and you and me and all things; and His mercy is over all His works. — Charles Kingsley

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. — Charles Kingsley

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

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. — Charles Kingsley

In the light of fuller day,
Of purer science, holier laws. — Charles Kingsley

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. — Charles Kingsley

[ ... ] 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

All but God is changing day by day. — Charles Kingsley

Study nature as the countenance of God. — Charles Kingsley

A garden, sir, wherein all rainbows and flowers were heaped together. — Charles Kingsley

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. — 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

See the land, her Easter keeping, Rises as her Maker rose. Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping, Burst at last from winter snows. Earth with heaven above rejoices ... — Charles Kingsley

Do what thou dost as if the earth were heaven, and thy last day the day of judgment. — Charles Kingsley

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