Top 100 Charles Kingsley Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

Featured in: Quotes About Trust

2. “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

3. “Friendship is like a glass ornament, once it is broken it can rarely be put back together exactly the same way.”

— Charles Kingsley

4. “Life is too short for mean anxieties.”

— Charles Kingsley

5. “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

6. “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

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

— Charles Kingsley

8. “I do not want merely to possess a faith, I want a faith that possesses me.”

— Charles Kingsley

9. “Feelings are like chemicals, the more you analyze them the worse they smell.”

— Charles Kingsley

10. “Better is old wine than new, and old friends like-wise.”

— Charles Kingsley

11. “Men must work, and women must weep.”

— Charles Kingsley

12. “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

13. “Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book.”

— Charles Kingsley

14. “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

Featured in: Romance Quotes

15. “Because I believe in a God of absolute and unbounded love, therefore I believe in a loving anger of His which will and must devour and destroy all which is decayed, monstrous, abortive in His universe till all enemies shall be put under His feet, and God shall be all in all.”

— Charles Kingsley

16. “For men must work and women must weep, And the sooner it’s over, the sooner to sleep.”

— Charles Kingsley

17. “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

18. “Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.”

— Charles Kingsley

19. “Beauty is God’s handwriting. Welcome it in every fair face, every fair day, every fair flower.”

— Charles Kingsley

20. “All we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”

— Charles Kingsley

21. “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

22. “Love is sentimental measles.”

— Charles Kingsley

23. “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

24. “Do noble things, not dream them all day long.”

— Charles Kingsley

25. “Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message 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, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.”

— Charles Kingsley

26. “There is a great deal of human nature in man.”

— Charles Kingsley

27. “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

28. “He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.”

— Charles Kingsley

29. “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

30. “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

31. “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

32. “Have thy tools ready. God will find thee work.”

— Charles Kingsley

33. “Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog its day.”

— Charles Kingsley

34. “The loveliest fairy in the world; and her name is Mrs Do as you would bed one by.”

— Charles Kingsley

35. “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

36. “Still the race of hero spirits pass the lamp from hand to hand.”

— Charles Kingsley

37. “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

38. “The most wonderful and the strongest things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see.”

— Charles Kingsley

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

— Charles Kingsley

40. “Pain is no evil, unless it conquers us.”

— Charles Kingsley

41. “Every duty which is bidden to wait returns with seven fresh duties at its back.”

— Charles Kingsley

42. “Wherever is love and loyalty, great purposes and lofty souls, even though in a hovel or a mine, there is fairyland.”

— Charles Kingsley

43. “Cheerfulness is full of significance: it suggests good health, a clear conscience, and a soul at peace with all human nature.”

— Charles Kingsley

44. “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

45. “Give me something huge to fight, – and I should enjoy that – but why make me sweep the dust?”

— Charles Kingsley

46. “Stick to the old truths and the old paths, and learn their di- vineness by sick-beds and in every-day work, and do not darken your mind with intellectual puzzles, which may breed disbelief, but can never breed vital religion or practical usefulness.”

— Charles Kingsley

47. “Love can make us fiends as well as angels.”

— Charles Kingsley

48. “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

49. “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

50. “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