Charles W. Chesnutt Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

The workings of the human heart are the profoundest mystery of the universe. One moment they make us despair of our kind, and the next we see in them the reflection of the divine image.

Charles W. Chesnutt
Impossibilities are merely things of which we have not learned, or which we do not wish to happen.

Charles W. Chesnutt
We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things.

Charles W. Chesnutt
Selfishness is the most constant of human motives. Patriotism, humanity, or the love of God may lead to sporadic outbursts sweep away the heaped-up wrongs of centuries; but they languish at times, while the love of self works on ceaselessly, unwearyingly, burrowing always at the very root of life, and heaping up fresh wrongs for other centuries to sweep away.

Charles W. Chesnutt
Nations do not first become rich and learned and then free, but the lesson of history has been that they first become free and then rich and learned, and oftentimes fall back into slavery again because of too great wealth, and the resulting luxury and carelessness of civic virtues.

Charles W. Chesnutt
Truth, it has been said, is mighty and must prevail; but it sometimes leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Charles W. Chesnutt
We are all puppets in the hands of fate and seldom see the strings...

Charles W. Chesnutt
It is evident that where the intermingling of the races has made such progress as it has in this country, the line which separates the races must in many instances have been practically obliterated.

Charles W. Chesnutt
We make our customs lightly; once made, like our sins, they grip us in bands of steel; we become the creatures of our creation.

Charles W. Chesnutt
There are sordid souls that eat and drink and breed and die, and imagine they have lived.

Charles W. Chesnutt