Charles Buxton

Charles Buxton (18 November 1823 – 10 August 1871) was an English brewer, philanthropist, writer and Member of Parliament.

Quotes

Notes of Thought (1883)

London: John Murray, 1883. Posthumous publication.

• Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal.
  • p. 25.

• Concentration alone conquers.
  • p. 28

• Silence is the severest criticism.
  • p. 57
  • Often misquoted as "Silence is sometimes the severest criticism."

• How strangely easy difficult things are!
  • p. 83

• Success soon palls. The joyous time is, when the breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rustle under your bows.
  • p. 91

• To make pleasures pleasant, shorten them.
  • p. 122

• The first duty towards children is to make them happy. If you have not made them so, you have wronged them. No other good they may get can make up for that.
  • p. 147

• You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.
  • p. 158

• Women see through and through each other; and often we most admire her whom they most scorn.
  • p. 178

• All movement, of every creature, comes from the desire after something better.
  • p. 189

• One of the finest sayings in the language is John Foster's "Live mightily."
  • p. 190

Attributed

• It would not be too much to say that if all drinking of fermented liquors could be done away, crime of every kind would fall to a fourth of its present amount, and the whole tone of moral feeling in the lower order might be indefinitely raised.
  • Reported to be in his pamphlet How to Stop Drunkenness in Grappling with the Monster[1] by T. S. Arthur