110+ Charles Kingsley Quotes On World, Educator And Activist

Charles Kingsley was an English clergyman, novelist, and historian in the 19th century. He was a chaplain to Queen Victoria and a professor of modern history at Cambridge University. He wrote many novels including The Water Babies, and was a strong advocate for social reform in England. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Charles Kingsley on life, love, world.

Top 10 Charles Kingsley Quotes

1. Feelings are like chemicals, the more you analyze them the worse they smell.
2. 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.
3. If "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers' hands
4. Friendship is like a glass ornament, once it is broken it can rarely be put back together exactly the same way.
5. All we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Those clouds are angels' robes.
9. The most wonderful and the strongest things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see.
10. 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 Image Quotes

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

Charles Kingsley Short Quotes

• Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.
• Pain is no evil, unless it conquers us.
• Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog its day.
• Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book.
• There is a great deal of human nature in man.
• Have thy tools ready. God will find thee work.
• Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy.
• You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be.
• Every duty which is bidden to wait returns with seven fresh duties at its back.
• Better is old wine than new, and old friends like-wise.

Charles Kingsley Quotes About Life

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. — Charles Kingsley

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

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

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

For men must work and women must weep, And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep. — Charles Kingsley

Do noble things, not dream them all day long: And so make Life, Death, and the vast Forever one grand, sweet song. — 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

Life is too short for mean anxieties. — Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley Quotes About Love

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

Three fishers went sailing away to the west, Away to the west as the sun went down; Each thought on the woman who loved him the best, And the children stood watching them out of the town. — 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

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

And what is the joy of Christ? The joy and delight which springs forever in His great heart, from feeling that He is forever doing good; from loving all, and living for all; from knowing that if not all, yet millions on millions are grateful to Him, and will be forever. — Charles Kingsley

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. — Charles Kingsley

Love is sentimental measles. — 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

Love can make us fiends as well as angels. — 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

Charles Kingsley Quotes About World

[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

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

Possession means to sit astride the world Instead of having it astride of you. — 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 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. — Charles Kingsley

The world is God's world, after all. — Charles Kingsley

If I am ever obscure in my expressions, do not fancy that therefore I am deep. If I were really deep, all the world would understand, though they might not appreciate. The perfectly popular style is the perfectly scientific one. To me an obscurity is a reason for suspecting a fallacy. — Charles Kingsley

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

Gradually the sunken land begins to rise again, and falls perhaps again, and rises again after that, more and more gently each time, till as it were the panting earth, worn out with the fierce passions of her fiery youth, has sobbed herself to sleep once more, and this new world of man is made. — Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley Quotes About True

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

If you do anything above party, the true hearted ones of all parties sympathize with you. — 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

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

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

Charles Kingsley Quotes About Comfort

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

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

Charles Kingsley Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

We shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not only with what we can understand, but content with what we do not understand-the habit of mind which theologians call, and rightly, faith in God. — 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

In proportion as man gets back the spirit of manliness, which is self-sacrifice, affection, loyalty loan idea beyond himself, a God above himself, so far will he rise above circumstances, and wield them at his will. — Charles Kingsley

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. — 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

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

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

Every winter, When the great sun has turned his face away, The earth goes down into a vale of grief, And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables, Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay- Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses. — Charles Kingsley

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. — 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

Do not fancy, as too many do, that thou canst praise God by singing hymns to Him in church once a week, and disobeying Him all the week long. He asks of thee works as well as words; and more, he asks of thee works first and words after. — Charles Kingsley

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

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

Duty--the command of heaven, the eldest voice of God. — 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

What is the commonest, and yet the least remembered form of heroism? The heroism of an average mother. Ah! when I think of that broad fact I gather hope again for poor humanity, and this dark world looks bright, this diseased world looks wholesome to me once more, because, whatever else it is or is not full of, it is at least full of mothers. — Charles Kingsley

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

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

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

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

Do you think that a man is renewed by God's Spirit, when except for a few religious phrases, and a little more outside respectability, he is just the old man, the same character at heart he ever was? — Charles Kingsley

Oh! that we two were Maying Down the stream of the soft spring breeze; Like children with violets playing, In the shade of the whispering trees. — Charles Kingsley

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

The traveler fancies he has seen the country. So he has, the outside of it at least; but the angler only sees the inside. The angler only is brought close, face to face with the flower and bird and insect life of the rich riverbanks, the only part of the landscape where the hand of man has never interfered. — 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

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

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

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

In the four hundred and thirteenth year of the Christian era, some three hundred miles above Alexandria, the young monk Philammon was sitting on the edge of a low range of inland cliffs, crested with drifting sand. — 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.When all the world is old, lad,And all the trees are brown;And all the sport is stale, lad,And all the wheels run down;Creep home, and take your place there,The spent and maimed amoung:God grant you find one face there,You loved when all was young. — 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

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

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

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

All the butterflies and cockyolybirds would fly past me. — 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

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

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. — Charles Kingsley

I am not aware that payment, or even favors, however gracious, bind any man's soul and conscience in questions of highest morality and highest importance. — Charles Kingsley

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. — Charles Kingsley

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? — Charles Kingsley

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

Science frees us in many ways...from the bodily terror which the savage feels. But she replaces that, in the minds of many, by a moral terror which is far more overwhelming. — Charles Kingsley

There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream. — Charles Kingsley

You are literally filled with the fruit of your own devices, with rats and mice and such small deer, paramecia, and entomostraceæ, 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 believe not only in "special providences," but in the whole universe as one infinite complexity of "special providences. — Charles Kingsley

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

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

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

[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

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

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

It has been said that true religion will make a man a more thorough gentleman than all the courts in Europe. And it is true that you may see simple laboring men as thorough gentlemen as any duke, simply because they have learned to fear God; and, fearing him, to restrain themselves, which is the very root and essence of all good breeding. — 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

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

Nothing is so infectious as example. — Charles Kingsley

Life Lessons by Charles Kingsley

1. Charles Kingsley taught that we should strive to be kind and generous to those around us, and to always be open to learning and growing.
2. He also believed that we should take responsibility for our actions and their consequences, and that we should use our talents to help others.
3. Finally, he stressed the importance of understanding our place in the world and using our knowledge to make the world a better place.