Charles Kingsley Quotes

111 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
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
Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy.

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

Charles Kingsley
A scientific man must expect his little disappointments and injustices. If you were behind the scenes in the scientific world, I can assure you, you would find as much party-spirit, and unfairness, and jealousy, and emulation there, as anywhere else. Human nature, human nature, everywhere!

Charles Kingsley
See how nature is not only "maxima in minimis - greatest in her least, but often" pulcherrima in abditis - fairest in her most hidden... works.

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

Charles Kingsley
For science is, I verily believe, like virtue, its own exceeding great reward.

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
There is no lie in Nature; no discords in the revelations of science, in the laws of the Universe.

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

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

Charles Kingsley
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.

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
Oh England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high,
But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I

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
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
Wherever is love and loyalty, great purposes and lofty souls, even though in a hovel or a mine, there is fairyland.

Charles Kingsley
High for a star in the heavens, a sign and a hope for the seamen, Spreading thy long white arms all night in the heights of the aether, Hard by thy sire and the hero, thy spouse, while near thee thy mother Sits in her ivory chair, as she plaits ambrosial tresses; All night long thou wilt shine.

Charles Kingsley
Science was the child of Courage, and Courage the child of Knowledge.

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
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
Grandeur... consists in form, and not in size: and to the eye of the philosopher, the curve drawn on a paper two inches long, is just as magnificent, just as symbolic of divine mysteries and melodies, as when embodied in the span of some cathedral roof.

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

Charles Kingsley
Logic like mathematics, seems to tell me too little about things. It does not enlarge my knowledge of man or nature; and those are what I thirst for.

Charles Kingsley