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

Categorized in : Book Bridges Autumn

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

best-friend love friendship

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

Charles Kingsley

running happiness reality

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

freedom men two

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

Charles Kingsley

christian faith want

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

thanksgiving excellence self

Beauty is God's handwriting — a wayside sacrament; welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower, and thank for it Him.

Charles Kingsley

flower christian beauty

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.

Charles Kingsley

respect people thinking

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

Charles Kingsley

self-improvement human-nature soul

You must not talk about 'ain't and can't' when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean.

Charles Kingsley

ocean nature children

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

military rain war

A blessed thing it is 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; who will speak the honest truth to us, while the world flatters us to our face, and laughs at us behind our back; who will give us counsel and reproof in a day of prosperity and self-conceit; but who, again, will comfort and encourage us in days of difficulty and sorrow, when the world leaves us alone to fight our own battle as we can.

Charles Kingsley

fighting blessed self

Pain is no evil, unless it conquers us.

Charles Kingsley

pain evil reality

Nothing is so infectious as example.

Charles Kingsley

example

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

hope men life

Make it a rule and pray to God to help you keep it . . . never, if possible, to lie down at night without being able to say "I have made one human being at least a little wiser, a little happier, or a little better this day."

Charles Kingsley

inspirational-love night lying

Did it ever strike you that goodness is not merely a beautiful thing, but by far the most beautiful thing in the whole world? So that nothing is to be compared for value with goodness; that riches, honor, power, pleasure, learning, the whole world and all in it, are not worth having in comparison with being good; and the utterly best thing for a person is to be good, even though they were never to be rewarded for it.

Charles Kingsley

honor beautiful world

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

Charles Kingsley

reading men book

A man may learn from his Bible to be a more thorough gentleman than if he had been brought up in all the drawing-rooms in London.

Charles Kingsley

drawing gentleman men

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

lonely light country

There's no use doing a kindness if you do it a day too late.

Charles Kingsley

generosity kindness reality