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 forever one grand, sweet song.
– Charles Kingsley
Character
Have thy tools ready. God will find thee work.
– Charles Kingsley
Service | Work
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
Diligence | Self-control | Virtue
Pain is no evil, unless it conquers us.
– Charles Kingsley
Pain
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
Happiness | Comfort
The world is God’s world, after all.
– Charles Kingsley
God
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
Heaven
Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog its day.
– Charles Kingsley
Life | Animals | Youth
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
Life
Feelings are like chemicals; the more you analyze them the worse they smell.
– Charles Kingsley
Reasoning | Feelings
These glorious things – words – are man’s right alone. Without words we should know no more of each other’s hearts and thoughts than the dog knows of his fellow dog for, if you will consider, you always think to yourself in words, though you do not speak them aloud; and without them all our thoughts would be mere blind longings, feelings which we could not understand ourselves.
– Charles Kingsley
Reasoning | Feelings
Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do which must be done, whether you like it or not.
– Charles Kingsley
Service
I do not want merely to possess a faith; I want a faith that possesses me.
– Charles Kingsley
Faith
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.
– Charles Kingsley
Friendship
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
Service | Freedom
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
Service
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
The Bible
We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable’s handbook, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they are overloaded.
– Charles Kingsley
The Bible
There’s no use doing a kindness if you do it a day too late.
– Charles Kingsley
Kindness
There is a great deal of human nature in man.
– Charles Kingsley
Life
He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.
– Charles Kingsley
Apathy
It is only the great hearted who can be true friends. The mean and cowardly, can never know what true friendship means.
– Charles Kingsley
Friendship
Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message to us from human souls we never saw, and yet these arouse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.
– Charles Kingsley
Books | Comfort
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 unrepressed on earth.
– Charles Kingsley
Charity | Romance