H.W. Charles Quotes

I'd walk over my own grandmother to re-elect Richard Nixon.

I was perfectly satisfied with the West Side of Chicago when I was in knickerbockers. I hope it was with me.

I would not be on the level did I not confess that I always have believed that the old Browns were a great team, one of the greatest ever organized.

No one has any license to brag because he is honest. That should be natural instinct and, besides, if you are not, they put you in jail. Honesty is merely a form of insurance.

The first thing you should know about people is that you don’t know the first thing about them.

As we get older, life becomes very complicated in terms of concessions we have to make.

The normal food of man is vegetable.

To my deep mortification my father once said to me, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."

I think it can be shown that there is such an unerring power at work in Natural Selection, which selects exclusively for the good of each organic being.

...all nature is perverse & will not do as I wish it.

Worms have played a more important part in the history of the world than humans would at first suppose.

It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.

I suppose you are two fathoms deep in mathematics, and if you are, then God help you. For so am I, only with this difference: I stick fast in the mud at the bottom, and there I shall remain.

Music was known and understood before words were spoken.

A novel according to my taste, does not come into the moderately good class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love - and if a pretty woman, all the better.

The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry.

[T]he young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.

...I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.— Let each man hope & believe what he can.—

The age-old and noble thought of 'I will lay down my life to save another,' is nothing more than cowardice.

In my simplicity, I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.

If I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done so much as I have accomplished.

I always feel as if my books came half out of Lyell's brain... & therefore that when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes.

A republic cannot succeed, till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.

I always make special notes about evidence that contridicts me: supportive evidence I can remember without trying.

The season of love is that of battle. The roots of these fights run deep.

Farewell Australia! You ... are too great and ambitious for affection, yet not great enough for respect. I leave your shores without sorrow or regret.

Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.

I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious views of anyone.

I wouldn't mind dying for France, but not for Air France.

Leaders of men are later remembered less for the usefulness of what they have achieved than for the sweep of their endeavors.

I've always been interested in the outsider.

The past scampers like an alley cat through the present, leaving the paw prints of memories scattered helter-skelter.

Ride on! Ride on over all obstacles and win the race.

Everybody said so. Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right.

Money and goods are certainly the best of references.

The habit of paying compliments kept a man's tongue oiled without any expense.

It being a part of Mrs. Pipchin's system not to encourage a child's mind to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by force like an oyster.

There is something good in all weathers. If it doesn't happen to be good for my work today, it's good for some other man's today... and will come around for me tomorrow.

Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have got a little, it is often easy to get more.

There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands.

The more man knows of man, the better for the common brotherhood among men.

Have I yet to learn that the hardest and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any earthly record, and are suffered every day!

... No, the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me.

It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it's blowing up; and then they lengthens it out.

He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart.

I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit for nothing.

I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief.

The flowers that sleep by night, opened their gentle eyes and turned them to the day. The light, creation's mind, was everywhere, and all things owned its power.

Nobody near me here, but rats, and they are fine stealthy secret fellows.