What is charge?

Famous quotes containing the word charge:

“One can only call that youth healthful which refuses to be reconciled old ways and which, foolishly or shrewdly, combats the old. This is nature’s charge and all progress hinges upon it.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)

“I charge thee, Satan, housed within this man,
To yield possession to my holy prayers.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

“The sick man is taken away by the institution that takes charge not of the individual, but of his illness, an isolated object transformed or eliminated by technicians devoted to the defense of health the way others are attached to the defense of law and order or tidiness.”
—Michel de Certeau (1925–1986)