Charles Buxton (1823–1871): English brewer, philanthropist, writer and politician. The library holds 55 quotes by Charles Buxton. The 55 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
You would think, if our lips were made of horn and stuck out a foot or two from our faces, kisses at any rate would be done for. Not so. No creatures kiss each other so much as the birds.
Stint yourself, as you think good, in other things; but don’t scruple freedom in brightening home. Gay furniture and a brilliant garden are a sight day by day, and make life blither.
In life, as in chess, one’s own pawns block one’s way. A man’s very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him.
If Fortune has fairly sat on a man, he takes it for granted that life consists in being sat upon. But to be coddled on Fortune’s knee, and then have his ears boxed, that is aggravating.
It is astonishing how soon the whole conscience begins to unravel if a single stitch drops; one single sin indulged in makes a hole you could put your head through.
So long as he must fight his way, the man of genius pushes forward, conquering and to conquer. But how often is he at last overcome by a Capua! Ease and fame bring sloth and slumber.
Outward things don’t give, they draw out. You find in them what you bring to them. A cathedral makes only the devotional feel devotional. Scenery refines only the fine-minded.
The first duty towards children is to make them happy. If you have not made them happy, you have wronged them; no other good they may get can make up for that.
Nothing so much increases one’s reverence for others as a great sorrow to one’s self. It teaches one the depths of human nature. In happiness we are shallow, and deem others so.
It is astonishing how soon the whole conscience begins to unravel, if a single stitch drops; one little sin indulged makes a hole you could put your head through.
The essential difference between a good and a bad education is this, that the former draws on the child to learn by making it sweet to him; the latter drives the child to learn, by making it sour to him if he does not.
If its colors were but fast colors, self-conceit would be a most comfortable quality. But life is so humbling, mortifying, disappointing to vanity, that a man’s great idea of himself gets washed out of him by the time he is forty.
I more and more see this, that we judge men’s abilities less from what they say or do, than from what they look. ’Tis the man’s face that gives him weight. His doings help, but not more than his brow.
The road to success is not to be run upon by seven-leagued boots. Step by step, little by little, bit by bit,—that is the way to wealth, that is the way to wisdom, that is the way to glory. Pounds are the sons, not of pounds, but of pence.
Moral courage is more worth having than physical; not only because it is a higher virtue, but because the demand for it is more constant. Physical courage is a virtue which is almost always put away in the lumber room. Moral courage is wanted day by day.
The longer I live, the more deeply am I convinced that that which makes the difference between one man and another—between the weak and powerful, the great and insignificant—is energy, invincible determination; a purpose once formed, and then death or victory. This quality will do anything that is to be done in the world; and no two-legged creature can become a man without it.