Charles Kingsley Quotes

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

They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel crawling foam,
The cruel hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea:
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
Across the sands of Dee.

Don't holla till you are out of the wood. This is a night for praying rather than boasting.

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!"

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.

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.

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.

Oh! that we two were Maying.

[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.

For men must work, and women must weep,
And there's little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbor bar be moaning.

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.

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

Let us be content to do little, if God sets us at little tasks. It is but pride and self-will which says, "Give me something huge to fight, — and I should enjoy that — but why make me sweep the dust?"

This is eternal life; a life of everlasting love, showing itself in everlasting good works; and whosoever lives that life, he lives the life of God, and hath eternal life.

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 among:—
God grant you find one face there,
You loved when all was young.