H.W. Charles Quotes

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.

Knaves starve not in the land of fools.

I was a window dresser for Burton's once. What really put me off was the area manager coming round and saying, Charles, I think you're a natch at this.

Old Age, a second child, by nature curst With more and greater evils than the first, Weak, sickly, full of pains: in ev'ry breath Railing at life, and yet afraid of death.

Religion should be a source for reconciliation, for tolerance and for empathy.

No varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.

Fashion--a word which knaves and fools may use, Their knavery and folly to excuse.

The corporate state is an immensely powerful machine, ordered, legalistic, rational, yet utterly out of human control, wholly and perfectly indifferent to any human values.

I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.

Home is like the ship at sea, Sailing on eternally; Oft the anchor forth we cast, But can never make it fast.

Literature is a bad crutch, but a good walking-stick.

He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.

I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.

To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life.

The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for 
the existence of God.

The world meets nobody half way.

Thou has conquered, O pale Galilean.

It is not great talents God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus.

Ideas exist in our minds that can be accounted for by no established laws.

A father's holy life is a rich legacy for his sons.

Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived.

In hawthorn-time the heart grows light.

Wherever there is a grain of loyalty there is a glimpse of freedom.

My theory is to enjoy life, but my practice is against it.

Learn how to fail intelligently.

The moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value than the intellectual powers.

I think that the greatest education in the world is the education which helps one to be able to do the right things at the time it has to be done.

Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing.

This problem, too, will look simple after it is solved.

It is good to love the unknown.

The person who doesn't know something can't be done will often find a way to go ahead and do it.

The Muses were dumb while Apollo lectured.

A problem thoroughly understood is always fairly simple. Found your opinions on facts, not prejudices. We know too many things that are not true.

The whole fun of living is trying to make something better.

My favourite novel is Frederick Forsythe's Day Of The Jackal, the story about the unproven case of this apparent Englishman who was hired to assassinate De Gaulle….

We should have high expectations of our children, but politicians should not tell teachers how to meet them.

Oh call it by some better name, For friendship sounds too cold.

Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good.

Paddy Ashdown is the only party leader who's a trained killer. Although, to be fair, Mrs Thatcher was self taught.

Three simple words - freedom, justice and honesty. These sum up what the Liberal Democrats stand for.

I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil.

In the theatre, the actor is given immediate feedback.

He that gives a portion of his time and talent to the investigation of mathematical truth, will come to all other questions with a decided advantage over his opponents.

To be always doubting your ability to get what you long for is like trying to reach east by traveling west.

(The pig) hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure - and for such a tomb might be content to die.

Hope sees a crown in reserve, mansions in readiness, and Jesus Himself preparing a place for us, and by the rapturous sight she sustains the soul under the sorrows of the hour.

A babe is fed with milk and praise.

... probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.

It's a mark of any icon that it should be open to iconoclasm.

In 1979, postmodernism lost its understanding of the meaning of ornament. It degenerated into kitsch applique.