H.W. Charles Quotes

Nobody wants to conduct an autopsy on a dead saint.

How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.

Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?

That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.

hate contains truth. beauty is a facade.

people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.

I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.

There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity.

One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind.

Without literature, life is hell.

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that.

One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.

Anybody can make the simple complecated. Creativity is making the complecated simple.

He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.

Each experience of love nudges us toward the Story of Interbeing, because it only fits into that story and defies the logic of Separation.

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

The public character of every public servant is legitimate subject of discussion, and his fitness or unfitness for office may be fairly canvassed by any person.

Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.

Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.

Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

It may be a movement towards becoming like little children to admit that we are generally nothing else.

Diplomats are useful only in fair weather. As soon as it rains they drown in every drop.

The best artists know what to leave out.

Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax.

That the state of knowledge in any country will exert a directive influence on the general system of instruction adopted in it, is a principle too obvious to require investigation.

War hath no fury like a non-combatant.

Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage.

The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.

People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

Poetry is an orphan of silence.

For four years, I listened to stories of intelligence failures, and it wasn't due to incompetence of anyone in the system, but that the system is so arcane.

The saints shall persevere in holiness, because God perseveres in grace.

Blessed be agriculture! If one does not have too much of it.

Steampunk is nothing more than what happens when Goths discover brown.

What is irritating about love is that it is a crime that requires an accomplice.

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.

If you allow it, [suffering] can be the means by which God brings you His greatest blessings.

My music had roots which I'd dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.

I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.

When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.

Doves oppose war on the grounds that the risks exceed the gains. War with Iraq could be very costly, possibly degenerating into urban warfare.

A person's character is but half formed till after wedlock.

I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.

Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.

I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.

Years later, when I asked my father, I said 'Pop, why were you so much harder on me than my younger brothers?' he said, son, you plum wore me out.

God is truth and is to be worshiped, not because it's convenient, makes us feel good, or is therapeutic.