H.W. Charles Quotes

Black are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead

Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine.

I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place, bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself.

He was bolder in the daylight-most men are.

The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far we are pursued by nothing else.

things cannot be expected to turn up of themselves. We must in a measure assist to turn them up

So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

This is a world of action, and not moping and droning in.

Remember, to the last, that while there is life there is hope.

Try to do unto others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better that they should fail than you should.

The censure of those who are opposed to us, is the highest commendation that can be given us.

The thing with pretending you're in a good mood is that sometimes you can actually trick yourself into feeling better.

Books and music saved me as a teenager because it was through them that I realized that I wasn't alone in my obsessive love for words and music.

If you're not ready to die, then how can you live?

There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale.

France was built with swords. The fleur-de-lis, symbol of national unity, is only the image of a spear with three pikes.

Hearing Mass is the ceremony I most favor during my travels. Church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back.

Men are of no importance. What counts is who commands.

Deliberation is a function of the many; action is the function of one.

For all of us Frenchmen, the guiding rule of our epoch is to be faithful to France.

Nothing builds authority up like silence, splendor of the strong and shelter of the weak.

What do you take me for, an idiot?

Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.

It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.

Till facts are grouped & called there can be no prediction. The only advantage of discovering laws is to foretell what will happen & to see bearing of scattered facts.

At no time am I a quick thinker or writer: whatever I have done in science has solely been by long pondering, patience and industry.

We behold the face of nature bright with gladness.

There is no fundamental difference between humans and the higher mammalsin their mental faculties

Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.

It is the small things in life which count; it is the inconsequential leak which empties the biggest reservoir.

The first 20 stories written about a public figure set the tone for the next 2,000 and it is almost impossible to reverse it.

Culture is religion incarnate.

On the four aces doom'd to roll.

Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by others.

If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.

Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

Vanity finds in self-love so powerful an ally that it storms, as it were, by a coup de main,, the citadel of our heads, where, having blinded the two watchmen, it readily descends into the heart.

Afflictions sent by providence melt the constancy of the noble minded, but confirm the obduracy of the vile, as the same furnace that liquefies the gold, hardens the clay Charles Caleb Colton.

Envy, if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of another's prosperity, like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire, will sting itself to death.

It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge.

The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.

No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.

True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.

Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.

Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer.

It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.

Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.