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We have used the Bible as if it was a mere special constable's handbook — an opium-dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded — a mere book to keep the poor in order.

Charles Kingsley

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Charles Kingsley
Age: 55 †
Born: 1819
Born: June 12
Died: 1875
Died: January 23
Cleric
Historian
Novelist
Poet
Professor
University Teacher
Writer
Devonshire
Canon Kingsley
Used
Burden
Overloaded
Book
Patient
Overload
Bible
Opium
Mere
Beasts
Special
Dose
Poor
Biblical
Keep
Beast
Constable
Order
Keeping
Handbook

More quotes by Charles Kingsley

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Oh England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high, But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I
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So fleet the works of men, back to their earth againAncient and holy things fade like a dream.
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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.
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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.
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Gradually the sunken land begins to rise again, and falls perhaps again, and rises again after that, more and more gently each time, till as it were the panting earth, worn out with the fierce passions of her fiery youth, has sobbed herself to sleep once more, and this new world of man is made.
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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.
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Therefore, let us be patient, patient and let God our Father teach His own lesson, His own way. Let us try to learn it well and quickly but do not let us fancy that He will ring the school-bell, and send us to play before our lesson is learnt.
Charles Kingsley
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Better is old wine than new, and old friends like-wise.
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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
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For science is ... like virtue, its own exceeding great reward.
Charles Kingsley
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And how high is Christ's cross? As high as the highest heaven, and the throne of God, and the bosom of the Father that bosom out of which forever proceed all created things. Ay, as high as the highest heaven! for if you will receive it when Christ hung upon the cross, heaven came down on earth, and earth ascended into heaven.
Charles Kingsley
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All we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
Charles Kingsley
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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
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Do noble things, not dream them all day long: And so make Life, Death, and the vast Forever one grand, sweet song.
Charles Kingsley
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No earnest thinker is a plagiarist pure and simple. He will never borrow from others that which he has not already, more or less, thought out for himself.
Charles Kingsley
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Nothing like one honest look, one honest thought of Christ upon His cross. That tells us how much He has been through, how much He endured, how much He conquered, how much God loved us, who spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us. Dare we doubt such a God? Dare we murmur against such a God?
Charles Kingsley
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He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.
Charles Kingsley
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He was not only, I soon discovered, a water drinker, but a strict vegetarian, to which, perhaps, he owed a great deal of the almost preternatural clearness, volubility, and sensitiveness of mind.
Charles Kingsley
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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
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I do not want merely to possess a faith, I want a faith that possesses me.
Charles Kingsley