Quotessence
Home / Authors / Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley Quotes

Professor

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenIfsWorldLongKnowsScienceChristHeartLittlesSoulHumansMayGivingSpiritChildrenEarthBookFacesFightingLaw

Famous Charles Kingsley Quotes

“I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom, panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life under the tropic forest, Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil, and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of; some law, or even mere hint of a law, explaining one fact; but explaining with it a thousand more, connecting them all with each other and with the mighty whole, till order and meaning shoots through some old Chaos of scattered observations.”

MenHumansI CanStatesWholeMomentsFactsShowsLawScienceOrderHe ManThousandSacredMereChaosForestsObservationLiftsVeilsConnectingExplainingIsisLaboratoryHintsFoulMicroscopes
Book:Selections from Some of the Writings of the Rev. C. Kingsley, M.A.
Create image

“You are literally filled with the fruit of your own devices, with rats and mice and such small deer, paramecia, and entomostraceæ, and kicking things with horrid names, which you see in microscopes at the Polytechnic, and rush home and call for brandy-without the water-stone, and gravel, and dyspepsia, and fragments of your own muscular tissue tinged with your own bile.”

HomeScienceNamesWaterStonesFilledFruitDevicesMiceRatsFragmentsKickingDeerTissuesMicroscopesBrandyGravel
Author:Charles Kingsley
Create image

“And no one has the right to say that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no water-babies existing; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies; and a thing which nobody ever did, or perhaps will ever do. But surely ... they would have put it into spirits, or into the Illustrated News, or perhaps cut it into two halves, poor dear little thing, and sent one to Professor Owen, and one to Professor Huxley, to see what they would each say about it.”

MindLittlesTwoDifferentScienceSpiritWaterPoorHalfCuttingSeeingBabyEvolutionNewsDearDifferent ThingsLittle ThingsProfessorsHuxley
Author:Charles Kingsley
Create image

“You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature. You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do; and nobody knows; not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove, or any other of the great men whom good boys are taught to respect. They are very wise men; and you must listen respectfully to all they say: but even if they should say, which I am sure they never would, 'That cannot exist. That is contrary to nature,' you must wait a little, and see; for perhaps even they may be wrong.”

IfsKnowsMenShouldMayLittlesScienceWaitingCan DoBoysWiseTaughtEvolutionContraryGreat MenProfessorsHypothesisNobody KnowsGroveVery WiseHuxleyGood Boy
Book:The Water-Babies
Create image

“[At the end of the story, its main character, Tom] is now a great man of science, and can plan railroads, and steam-engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth; and knows everything about everything, except why a hen's egg don't turn into a crocodile, and two or three other little things that no one will know till the coming of the Cocqcigrues.”

KnowsMenLittlesTwoEndsCharacterStoriesScienceTurnsThreeKnowledgePlansGunGreat MenEggsLittle ThingsEnginesElectricTomsSteamRailroadsCrocodilesHensMain CharactersTelegraphSteam Engines
Book:The Water-babies a Fairy Tale for a Land-baby by the Rev. Charles Kingsley
Create image

“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.”

KnowsMenWorldChildrenSaidScienceSpeakNatureNaturalWonderfulOceanRoundsCornersShoreSmallestNewtonWisestBoundlessPebblesIsaacWisest ManWonderful World
Book:The Water-babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-baby
Create image

“Mathematical knowledge is not-as all Cambridge men are surely aware-the result of any special gift. It is merely the development of those conceptions of form and number which every human being possesses; and any person of average intellect can make himself a fair mathematician if he will only pay continuous attention; in plain English, think enough about the subject.”

IfsThinkingMenHumansPersonsEnoughFormScienceHuman BeingsResultsNumbersPayAttentionSpecialSubjectsDevelopmentFairsAverageIntellectMathematicalConceptionMathematicianCambridgeSpecial GiftsPlain English
Book:Scientific Lectures and Essays
Create image