H.W. Charles Quotes

Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.

There is no more steely barb than that of the Infinite.

I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues; and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.

That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources.

We think that we do well to be angry with the rebellious, and so we prove ourselves to be more like Jonah than Jesus.

France has lost the battle but she has not lost the war.

Today I had a strange warning. I felt the wind of insanity brush my mind.

Poor white people and poor black people just don't know how much they have in common. Rich people don't give a damn about either group.

We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.

Remember the man who truly repents is never satisfied with his own repentance.

Silence is less injurious than a weak reply.

If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends.

If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours.

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us - never cease to instruct - never cloy.

Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.

Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed, and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her.

The more gross the fraud the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily be swallowed, since folly will always find faith where impostors will find imprudence.

Do not flatter yourselves: if you go to places of worship merely to look about you or to hear music, you are not worshipping God.

I always thought that no matter what kind of work people did, they should involve themselves totally with all the discrimination they ran into.

Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road.

Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever.

I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It was magic.

Why do you think that at 67 I would start a career as a dictator?

What do you think happens to a composer who is sincere and loves to write and has to wait thirty years to have someone play a piece of his music?

The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.

Once upon a time there was an old country, wrapped up in habit and caution. We have to transform our old France into a new country and marry it to its time.

The cabinet has no propositions to make, but orders to give.

The gospel is a gospel of giving and forgiving.

Pure water is the best gifts a man can bring. But who am I that I should have the best of anything? Let princes revel at the pump, let peers with ponds make free, ...beer is good enough for me.

Close your eyes and look inside, A mirror shines within; To find where you are going, First see where you have been.

Don't search for inspiration when you have a task to do; Just start your work and you will see that it will soon find you.

Don’t do it. Don’t love me.

Literature is the expression of society.

Forest, I fear you! In my ruined heart your roaring wakens the same agony as in cathedrals when the organ moans and from the depths I hear that I am damned.

It is one of the prodigious privileges of art that the horrific, artistically expressed, becomes beauty, and that sorrow, given rhythm and cadence, fills the spirit with a calm joy.

All that matters is that the thing be the thing of the thing.

I've discovered that numerous peak performers use the skill of mental rehearsal of visualization. They mentally run through important events before they happen.

God will not go forth with that man who marches in his own strength

I don't hate anyone, at least not for more than 48 minutes, barring overtime.

It didn't pay to trust another human being. Humans didn't have it, whatever it took.

This morning of the small snow I count the blessings, the leak in the faucet which makes of the sink time, the drop of the water on water.

If the poet has pursued a moral objective, he has diminished his poetic force.

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Drink wine, drink poetry, drink virtue.

When will government cease being a nuisance to everybody?

In New York you've got to have all the luck.

The one element that stands out most clearly among our peak performers is their virtually unassailable belief in the likelihood of their own success.

Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.

He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be; and he that studies men, will know how things are.

Before you kill something make sure you have something better to replace it with.