Quotes from Charles Kingsley

Those that wish to be clean, clean they will be; and those that wish to be foul, foul they will be. Remember.

A great man of science ... knows everything about everything, except why a hen's egg does not turn into a crocodile and two or three other little things. http://diggingupthefuture.wordpress.com/

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath elsewhere had its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, who is our home.

just in proportion as you hunger and thirst after righteousness, and wish and try simply and humbly to do your duty in that station to which God has called you, and to learn joyfully and trustingly anything and everything which God may see fit to teach you.  Then as your day your strength shall be.  Then will the Lord teach you, and inform you with his eye, and guide you in the way wherein you should go. 

Oh, don't hurt me!" cried Tom. "I only want to look at you; you are so handsome.

Greatness? I have tasted that cup within the last twelve months; do I not know that it is sweet in the mouth, but bitter in the belly?

They were strange and ugly and wrong and horrible, and it all began to come back to him, they were men.

the age in which the Romish Church had made marriage a legalized tyranny, and the laity, by a natural and pardonable revulsion, had exalted adultery into a virtue and a science? That all love was lust; that all women had their price; that profligacy, though an ecclesiastical sin, was so pardonable, if not necessary, as to be hardly a moral sin

Blow freshly, freshlier yet, thou good trade-wind, of whom it is written that He makes the winds His angels, ministering breaths to the heirs of His salvation. Blow freshlier yet, and save, if not me from death, yet her from worse than death. Blow on, and land me at her feet, to call the lost lamb home, and die!

How do you know that? Have you been there to see? And if you had been there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were none ... And no one has a right to say that no water babies exist till they have seen no water babies existing, which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water babies.

People's souls make their bodies, just as a snail makes its shell.

no wiser than those pigs are worldly men who compete, and grudge, and struggle with each other, which shall get most money, most fame, most power over their fellow-men.

he has discovered that the will of God is not to hate, not to torture, not to cast away from his presence, but to restore his creatures to goodness, that he may thereby restore them to usefulness.  David has discovered that God demands no sacrifice, much less self-torturing penance.  What he demands is the heart.  The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit.  A broken and a contrite heart he will not despise. 

What breeds more close communion between subjects than allegiance to the same queen? between brothers, than duty to the same father? between the devout, than adoration for the same Deity? And shall not worship for the same beauty be likewise a bond of love between the worshippers? and each lover see in his rival not an enemy, but a fellow-sufferer?

For when all things were made, none was made better than this: to be a lone man's companion, a sad man's cordial, a chilly man's fire. . . . There is no herb like it under the canopy of heaven.

if you do not know, reader, what a Fisher Hobbs is, you know nothing about pigs, and deserve no bacon for breakfast.

he came to the conclusion that there was some mysterious connection between cleverness and unhappiness, and thanking his stars that he was neither scholar, courtier, nor poet

Martyrdom, which looked so splendid when consummated selon les regles on Tower Hill or Tyburn, before pitying, or (still better) scoffing multitudes, looked a confused, dirty, ugly business there in the dark forest;

Of course, his own plan of letting ill alone was the rational, prudent, irreproachable plan, and just what any gentleman in his senses would have done; but here was a vulgar, fat curate, out of his senses, determined not to let ill alone, but to do something, as Cary felt in his heart, of a far diviner stamp.

For they were, in the first place, even down to the very poorest, a well-fed people, with fewer luxuries than we, but more abundant necessaries; and while beef, ale, and good woollen clothes could be obtained in plenty, without overworking either body or soul, men had time to amuse themselves in something more intellectual than mere toping in pot-houses.

Too many cooks spoil the broth, and half-a-dozen gentlemen aboard one ship are as bad as two kings of Brentford.

Am I in earnest? Oh dear no! Don't you know that this is a fairy tale, and all fun and pretence; and that you are not to believe one word of it, even if it is true?

you will believe the one true doctrine of this wonderful fairy tale; which is, that your soul makes your body, just as a snail makes his shell.

Four corners to my bed      Four angels round my head;      Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,      Bless the bed that I lie on.