Charles Kingsley Quotes

Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.

It is difficult for me to regard anyone who obeys no moral principle in his conduct to be a religious man.

If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind, generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.

Without Virtue there can be no liberty

Virtue is nothing but an act of loving that which is to be beloved, and that act is prudence, from whence not to be removed by constraint is fortitude; not to be allured by enticements is temperance; not to be diverted by pride is justice.

Our probity is not less at the mercy of fortune than our property.

If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

Honor is like the eye, which cannot suffer the least impurity without damage. It is a precious stone, the price of which is lessened by a single flaw.

You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners.

... men of highest genius have been too frequently of extremely shaky morals.

Self-denial is not a virtue; it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

He cannot be vertuous that is not rigorous.

I have seen men incapable of the sciences, but never any incapable of virtue.

Liberty is equally desirable to the good and to the bad, to the brave and to the dastardly.

A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.

There is no greater wealth than Virtue,And no greater loss than to forget it.

If a superior man abandon virtue, how can he fulfil the requirements of that name?

To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of virtue.

Tis certain that Morality is an indispensable Requisite of true Religion, and there can be none without it. But it would become the Pride and Ignorance of Pagans only, to magnify it, as the Whole of what is necessary.

Honesty is nothin' compared to decency.

Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.

Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth.

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.