Charles Kingsley Quotes

Evil is a source of moral intelligence in the sense that we need to learn from our shadow, from our dark side, in order to be good.

The struggle for morality never stays won. It's always in process.

Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence.

If you would be good, first believe that you are bad.

I have many times been praised for my lack of animosity towards the Germans. It's not a philosophical virtue. It's a habit of having my second reactions before the first.

In mortals there is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble; and a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base.

Everyone knows that weeds eat out the life of the garden and of the productive fields. It's like that in the building and developing of character. No one knows our own faults and tendencies better than we do ourselves, so that it is up to each one of us to keep the weeds out, and to keep all growth vigorous and fruitful.

Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble. So those on scepticism cause believers to affirm. Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few doubtingly of scepticism.

A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to ... emotions and affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it experiences against its will.

There isn't any virtue where there has never been any temptation.

... learning humility is a prerequisite for grace.

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good...Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.

Desires should never be justified,' Tehol said, wagging a finger. 'All you end up doing is illuminating the hidden reasons by virtue of their obvious absence.

Through money or power you cannot solve all problems. The problem in the human heart must be solved first.

Before I can face the future, I must first deal with the past.

If self-knowledge is the road to virtue, so is virtue still more the road to self-knowledge.

The very first temptation in the history of mankind was the temptation to be discontent...that is exactly what discontent(ment ) is - a questioning of the goodness of God.

There is probably no one, however rigid his virtue, who is not liable to find himself, by the complexity of circumstances, living at close quarters with the very vice which he himself has been most outspoken in condemning -- without altogether recognizing it beneath the disguise of ambiguous behavior which it assumes in his presence.

Milton Katselas said, "Who are you to look down your nose at Anna Magnani and Maureen Stapleton? Who do you think you are?" I was doing this kooky meditation at the time called inner-guide meditation, where you go into a cave and you have a guide, and you fly around. So I said to my inner guide, "Take me to the energy that's blocking me from accepting my casting" - because I understood it intellectually, but I didn't want to do it in my heart.

The good are better made by ill, As odours crushed are sweeter still.

You can't hate/love others without loving/hating yourself first.

We too often let the material things serve as indicators that we're doing well, even though something inside us tells us that were not doing our best. That we are avoiding that which is hard, but also necessary. That we are shrinking from rather than rising to the challenges of the age.

Make faithfulness and truth thy masters: have no friends unlike thyself: be not ashamed to mend thy faults.

As patience leads to peace, and study to science, so are humiliations the path that leads to humility.

The only thing that really matters now is whether man can climb up to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness, in order to be equal to the superhuman powers which the fallen angels have played into his hands. But he can make no progress until he becomes very much better acquainted with his own nature.