Quotes from Charles Kingsley

Don't talk of rights in the land of wrongs, man. But the Inchiquin knows well that the true Irish Esau has no worse enemy than his supplanter, the Norman Jacob.

I have lived long enough in courts, old Amyas, without a murrain on you, to have found out, first, that it is not so easy to shame the devil; and secondly, that it is better to outwit him; and the only way to do that, sweet chuck, is very often not to speak your mind at all.

for when had the true faith been other than persecuted and trampled under foot? If one came to think of it with eyes purified from the tears of carnal impatience, what was it but a glorious martyrdom? Blest

is it not written, that those who make haste to be rich, pierce themselves through with many sorrows?

smile not, reader, for those were days in which men believed in the devil);

Ignorance and evil, even in full flight, deal terrible backhanded      strokes at their pursuers.—HELPS.

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.

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.

You philosophers, however raised above your own bodies you may be, must really not forget we poor worldlings have bones to be broken.

He longed to marry Rose Salterne, with a wild selfish fury; but only that he might be able to claim her as his own property, and keep all others from her. Of her as a co-equal and ennobling helpmate; as one in whose honor, glory, growth of heart and soul, his own were inextricably wrapt up, he had never dreamed. Marriage would prevent God from being angry with that, with which otherwise He might be angry; and therefore the sanction of the Church was the more probable and safe course.

who, like other weak men, grew in valor as his opponent seemed inclined to make peace

You must expect to be beat a few times in your life, little man, if you live such a life as a man ought to live, let you be as strong and healthy as you may: and when you are, you will find it a very ugly feeling. I hope that that day you may have a stout staunch friend by you who is not beat; for, if you have not, you had best lie where you are, and wait for better times

When I walk the fields I am oppressed now and then with an innate feeling that everything I see has a meaning, if I could but understand it.

for a schoolroom without a physical atlas is like a needle without an eye)

Psalm lxxviii. 71, 72, 73.  He chose David his servant, and took him away from the sheep-folds. 

Pues si los cambios que experimentan los animales inferiores son tan maravillosos y difíciles de descubrir, ¿por qué no habría de haber cambios igual de maravillosos o más, e igualmente difíciles de descubrir, en los seres superiores? ¿No

where the Coffins had lived ever since Noah's flood (if, indeed, they had not merely returned thither after that temporary displacement)

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.

Fully agreeing with Sir Richard Grenville's great axiom, that he who cannot obey cannot rule, Lucy had been for the last five-and-twenty years training him pretty smartly to obey her, with the intention, it is to be charitably hoped, of letting him rule her in turn when his lesson was perfected.

Ah, my brother, you cannot comprehend the pain of parting from her. No, I can't. I would die for the least hair of her royal head, God bless it! but I could live very well from now till Doomsday without ever setting eyes on the said head.

All eyes were eagerly fixed on the low wooded hills which slept in the moonlight, spangled by fireflies, with a million dancing stars; all nostrils drank greedily the fragrant air, which swept from the land, laden with the scent of a thousand flowers; all ears welcomed, as a grateful change from the monotonous whisper and lap of the water, the hum of insects, the snore of the tree-toads, the plaintive notes of the shore-fowl, which fill a tropic night with noisy life.

Qualis Natura formatrix, si talis formata? Oh my God, how fair must be Thy real world, if even Thy phantoms are so fair!

For I fear the Gods, and show hospitality to all strangers; knowing that good deeds, like evil ones, always return to those who do them.

See now, God made all these things; and never a man, perhaps, set eyes on them till fifty years agone; and yet they were as pretty as they are now, ever since the making of the world. And why do you think God could have put them here, then, but to please Himself—and Amyas took off his hat—with the sight of them? Now, I say, brother Frank, what's good enough to please God, is good enough to please you and me.