Charles Dickens Quotes Index

Charles Dickens Quotes Index

Charles Dickens Quotes Index: Charles Dickens was one of the most prolific and renowned writers of the 19th century. His novels, filled with intricate characters and detailed depictions of Victorian England, provide a plethora of memorable quotes. Here are some of the most famous quotes attributed to Charles Dickens:

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 01

Charles dickens quotes

 

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“…kahrımdam ölecekmişim gibi geliyordu da, ne zamandan beri kahrolduğumu, bu duyguyu haftanın hangi gününde algıladığımı, dahası bunu algılayanın ben, kendim olup olmadığını doğru dürüst kestiremiyordum bile.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“Doors had lost their hinges, and were holding on by their latches; windows were broken, painted plaster had peeled off, and was lying about in clods; fowls and cats had so taken possession of the out-buildings, that I couldn’t help thinking of the fairy tales, and eyeing them with suspicion, as transformed retainers, waiting to be changed back again.  One old Tom in particular: a scraggy brute, with a hungry green eye (a poor relation, in reality, I am inclined to think): came prowling round and round me, as if he half believed, for the moment, that I might be the hero come to marry the lady, and set all to-rights; but discovering his mistake, he suddenly gave a grim snarl, and walked away with such a tremendous tail, that he couldn’t get into the little hole where he lived, but was obliged to wait outside, until his indignation and his tail had gone down together.”
― Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 01
Charles dickens quotes

 

“Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you by a true friend. Which this to you the true friend say. If you can’t get to be on common through going straight, you’ll never get to do it through going crooked. So don’t tell no more on ‘em, Pip, and live well and die happy.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“The mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the streets; the rain fell sluggishly down, and everything felt cold and clammy to the touch.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think, as I have observed it to be considered since. I have known it very fashionable indeed. I have seen it displayed with such success, that I have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars. Perhaps it impressed me the more then, because it was new to me, but it certainly did not tend to exalt my opinion of, or to strengthen my confidence in, Mr. Jack Maldon.”
― Charles Dickens, Works of Charles Dickens

 

“,,Jak nauczyło mnie doświadczenie, obraz, jaki zakochany tworzy sobie o przedmiocie swojej miłości, nie zawsze zgodny bywa z prawdą”
― Charles Dickens , Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 01

 

“It’s a devil of a thing, gentlemen,’ said Mr Swiveller, ‘when relations fall out and disagree. If the wing of friendship should never moult a feather, the wing of relationship should never be clipped, but be always expanded and serene. Why should a grandson and grandfather peg away at each other with mutual wiolence when all might be bliss and concord. Why not jine hands and forgit it?”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

 

“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there’s been any fault at all to-day, it’s mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 01
Charles dickens quotes

 

“Pumblechook made out, after carefully surveying the premises, that he had first got upon the roof of the forge, and had then got upon the roof of the house, and had then let himself down the kitchen chimney by a rope made of his bedding cut into strips; and as Mr. Pumblechook was very positive and drove his own chaise-cart — over Everybody — it was agreed that it must be so. Mr. Wopsle, indeed, wildly cried out, “No!” with the feeble malice of a tired man; but, as he had no theory, and no coat on, he was unanimously set at naught,— not to mention his smoking hard behind, as he stood with his back to the kitchen fire to draw the damp out: which was not calculated to inspire confidence.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

 

“Whoever came about me, still settled down into Joe. I opened my eyes in the night, and I saw in the great chair at the beside, Joe. I opened my eyes in the day, and, sitting on the window-seat, smoking his pipe in the shaded open window, still I saw Joe. I asked for cooling drink, and the dear hand that gave it me was Joe’s. I sank back on my pillow after drinking, and the face that looked so hopefully and tenderly upon me was the face of Joe.
At last, one day, I took the courage, and said, ‘Is it Joe?’
And the dear old home-voice answered, ‘Which it air, old chap.’
‘Oh Joe, you break my heart! Look angry at me, Joe. Strike me, Joe. Tell me of my ingratitude. Don’t be so good to me!’
For, Joe had actually laid his head down on the pillow at my side, and put his arm round my neck, in his joy that I knew him.
‘Which, dear old Pip, old chap,’ said Joe, ‘you and me was ever friends. And when you’re well enough to go out for a ride – what larks!”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

“it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 02

 

 

“İleride ne yapacağını hiç düşündün mü?”
“Hayır. İlerisiyle ilgili herhangi bir şey düşünmekten korkuyorum çünkü.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“A day wasted on others is not wasted on oneself.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“What is the point of having all that money if you are never going to enjoy it?”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“Exactly what I myself had thought, many times. Exactly what was perfectly manifest to me at the moment. But how could I, a poor dazed village lad avoid that wonderful inconsistency into which the best and wisest of men fall everyday.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“indefatigable”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 02
Charles Dickens Quotes

 

“Martin was very glad to hear this, feeling well assured that if intelligence and virtue led, as a matter of course, to the acquisition of dollars, he would speedily become a great capitalist.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit [Illustrated edition

 

“A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“Estoy convencido de que aquella falta de memoria con respecto a tales detalles me hicieron llorar interiormente, que es el llanto más triste de todos.”
― Charles Dickens, Obras Completas de Charles Dickens

 

“Oh! there is an aristocracy here, then?’ said Martin. ‘Of what is it composed?’ ‘Of intelligence, sir,’ replied the colonel; ‘of intelligence and virtue. And of their necessary consequence in this republic—dollars, sir.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit [Illustrated edition]

 

“Light ’em up again!’ said Mr Meagles.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 02

 

“To stop the clock of busy existence at the hour when we were personally sequestered from it, to suppose mankind stricken motionless when we were brought to a stand-still, to be unable to measure the changes beyond our view by any larger standard than the shrunken one of our own uniform and contracted existence, is the infirmity of many invalids, and the mental unhealthiness of almost all recluses.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

 

 

 

“like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“refreshment.”
― Charles Dickens, 100 Eternal Masterpieces of Literature #1

 

“Saçmalık bu,” dedi Estella. “Saçmalık. Ha deyinceye kadar geçer gider bu üzüntün.”
“Ah, Estella, hiçbir zaman!”
“Bir haftaya kalmaz, unutur gidersin beni.”
“Unutup gitmek mi? Ah, Estella, benim varlığımın, öz benliğimin parçasısın sen.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“Come, then!” cried Defarge, in a resounding voice. “Patriots and friends, we are ready! The Bastille!”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

 

“This, again, was among the fictions of Coketown. Any capitalist there, who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn’t each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every one for not accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why don’t you go and do it?”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 02

 

“The voice of Time,’ said the Phantom, ‘cries to man, Advance!  Time is for his advancement and improvement; for his greater worth, his greater happiness, his better life; his progress onward to that goal within its knowledge and its view, and set there, in the period when Time and He began.  Ages of darkness, wickedness, and violence, have come and gone—millions uncountable, have suffered, lived, and died—to point the way before him.  Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which will strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its momentary check!”
― Charles Dickens, The Chimes

 

 

“Fu, per me, un giorno memorabile, gravido di profondi cambiamenti nella mia vita. Ma succede così per qualunque vita. Immaginate di eliminarne un certo giorno, e pensate un po’ come il suo corso sarebbe stato diverso! Fermati, tu che leggi, e pensa per un attimo alla lunga catena di ferro o d’oro, di spine o di fiori, che mai ti avrebbe legato se, in un solo memorabile giorno, non se ne fosse costruito il primo anello.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“We call this a state of childishness, but it is the same poor hollow mockery of it, that death is of sleep. Where, in the dull eyes of doating men, are the laughing light and life of childhood, the gaiety that has known no check, the frankness that has felt no chill, the hope that has never withered, the joys that fade in blossoming? Where, in the sharp lineaments of rigid and unsightly death, is the calm beauty of slumber, telling of rest for the waking hours that are past, and gentle hopes and loves for those which are to come? Lay death and sleep down, side by side, and say who shall find the two akin. Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“An ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in while I was glancing at them, and coming straight up to the mother, said, “Jenny! Jenny!” The mother rose on being so addressed and fell upon the woman’s neck. She also had upon her face and arms the marks of ill usage. She had no kind of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; but when she condoled with the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no beauty. I say condoled, but her only words were “Jenny! Jenny!” All the rest was in the tone in which she said them. I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and God.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 03

 

 

 

“Tú apareces en todas las líneas que he leído en mi vida.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“for any printed lie that any notorious villain pens, although it militate directly against the character and conduct of a life, appeals at once to your distrust, and is believed. You will strain at a gnat in the way of trustfulness and confidence, however fairly won and well deserved; but you will swallow a whole caravan of camels, if they be laden with unworthy doubts and mean suspicions.”
― Charles Dickens, American Notes and Pictures from Italy

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 03

 

“Hallow! Below there!”
― Charles Dickens, The Signalman

 

“What have paupers to do with soul or spirit? It’s quite enough that we let ’em have live bodies.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“Gene de, Estella’yı düşündüğüm zaman…”
Herbert gözlerini ateşten ayırmaksızın, “Estella’yı düşünmediğin zaman var mı ki?” diye araya girdi.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“Up to this time, Mr Pancks had transacted little or no business at his quarters in Pentonville, except in the sleeping line; but now that he had become a fortune-teller,”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

“I have undergone too much, my friend, to feel pride or squeamishness now. Except – added Nicholas, hastily, after a short silence – except such squeamishness as is common honesty, and so much pride as constitutes self-respect.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 03

 

“nearly”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and—and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“Who puts into the mouth of Time, or of its servants,’ said the Goblin of the Bell, ‘a cry of lamentation for days which have had their trial and their failure, and have left deep traces of it which the blind may see—a cry that only serves the present time, by showing men how much it needs their help when any ears can listen to regrets for such a past—who does this, does a wrong.  And you have done that wrong, to us, the Chimes.”
― Charles Dickens, The Chimes

 

 

“THE IVY GREEN

Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
That creepeth o’er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold.
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim;
And the mouldering dust that years have made,
Is a merry meal for him.
Creeping where no life is seen,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,
And a staunch old heart has he.
How closely he twineth, how tight he clings
To his friend the huge Oak Tree!
And slily he traileth along the ground,
And his leaves he gently waves,
As he joyously hugs and crawleth round
The rich mould of dead men’s graves.
Creeping where grim death has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,
And nations have scattered been;
But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,
From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant in its lonely days,
Shall fatten upon the past;
For the stateliest building man can raise,
Is the Ivy’s food at last.
Creeping on where time has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

 

“If I could have known Cicero, and been his friend, and talked with him in his retirement at Tusculum (beau-ti-ful Tusculum l), I could have died contented.”
― Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

 

“was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it. At last, however, he began to think—as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol : 1843 First edition

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 04

 

“other gentlemen had come out with him. One was a low-spirited gentleman of middle age, of a meagre habit, and a disconsolate face; who kept his hands continually in the pockets of his scanty pepper-and-salt trousers, very large and dog’s-eared from that custom; and was not particularly well brushed or washed. The other, a full-sized, sleek, well-conditioned gentleman, in a blue coat with bright buttons, and a white cravat. This gentleman had a very red face, as if an undue proportion of the blood in his body were squeezed up into his head; which perhaps accounted for his having also the appearance of being rather cold about the heart. He who had Toby’s meat upon the fork, called to the first one by the name of Filer; and they both drew near together. Mr. Filer being exceedingly short-sighted, was obliged to go so close to the remnant of Toby’s dinner before he could make out what it was, that Toby’s heart leaped up into his mouth. But Mr. Filer didn’t eat it. “This is a description of animal food, Alderman,” said Filer, making little punches in it, with a pencil-case, “commonly known to the labouring population of this country, by the name of tripe.” The Alderman laughed, and winked; for he was a merry fellow, Alderman Cute. Oh, and a sly fellow,”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol and Other Stories

 

“Do go, my dear friend — I don’t mean to ask her to marry, but to ask her to dance. — Never mind the looks of the thing. It will make her happy; and what does it cost you? Ah, my dear fellow! take this counsel: always dance with the old ladies — always dance with the governesses. It is a comfort to the poor things when they get up in their garret that somebody has had mercy on them. And such a handsome fellow as YOU too!”
― Charles Dickens, Delphi Christmas Collection Volume I (Illustrated)

 

“waking but now? If it be so, O listener, dear to him in all his visions, try to bear in mind the stern realities from which these shadows come; and in your sphere — none is too wide, and none too limited for such an end — endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them. So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy.”
― Charles Dickens, The Christmas Books

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 04

 

“- Джо, – сказал я, – как ты думаешь, не следует ли мне навестить мисс Хэвишем?
– Да как тебе сказать, – задумчиво протянул Джо, – А зачем?
– Зачем? Ну, зачем вообще ходят в гости?
– Бывает, Пип, что и неизвестно, зачем ходят.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

“Ah, how I loved her! What happiness (I thought) if we were married, and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields, never growing older, never growing wiser, children ever, rambling hand in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our heads on moss at night, in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried by the birds when we were dead!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.’ Consider nothing impossible, then treat possiblities as probabilities.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

“My advice is, never do to-morrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

“That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

“I stole her heart away and put ice in its place.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

“Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 05

 

“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

 

“I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection .”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“I’ll tell you,” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, “what real love it. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter – as I did!”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 05

 

“Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures, hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“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.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 05

 

“We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’ returned the nephew. ‘Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

“They are Man’s and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,’ faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 06

 

 

“Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“There are some upon this earth of yours who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since-on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place, bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 06

 

“There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

“My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
― Charles Dickens

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 06

 

 

 

“Life is made of so many partings welded together”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“Never,” said my aunt, “be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.”

(Frauds on the Fairies, 1853)”
― Charles Dickens, Works of Charles Dickens

 

“You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me. But if you would return a favourable answer to my offer of myself in marringe, you could draw me to any good – every good – with equal force.”
― charles dickens

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 07

 

“No varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“The sun,–the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man–burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
“I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
“And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens Quotes Part 07
“Trifles make the sum of life. ”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
“Please, sir, I want some more.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
“I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“There were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House
“The suspense: the fearful, acute suspense: of standing idly by while the life of one we dearly love, is trembling in the balance; the racking thoughts that crowd upon the mind, and make the heart beat violently, and the breath come thick, by the force of the images they conjure up before it; the desperate anxiety to be doing something to relieve the pain, or lessen the danger, which we have no power to alleviate; the sinking of soul and spirit, which the sad remembrance of our helplessness produces; what tortures can equal these; what reflections of endeavours can, in the full tide and fever of the time, allay them!”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
“Bah,” said Scrooge, “Humbug.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens Quotes Part 07
“I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished.”
― Charles Dickens (David Copperfield), David Copperfield
“Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It’s so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
“Some people are nobody’s enemies but their own, yer know.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“Marley was dead: to begin with.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

 

“It’s in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

“[Credit is a system whereby] a person who can’t pay, gets another person who can’t pay, to guarantee that he can pay.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 08

 

“LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

“Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 08

 

“He went to the church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and for, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of homes, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed of any walk, that anything, could give him so much happiness. (p. 119)”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

“Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

“I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

“We forge the chains we wear in life.”
― Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 08

 

“When I speak of home, I speak of the place where in default of a better–those I love are gathered together; and if that place where a gypsy’s tent, or a barn, I should call it by the same good name notwithstanding.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

“I only ask to be free, the butterflies are free.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“God bless us, every one!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

“How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, oh, Father, What have you done with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here? Said louisa as she touched her heart.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 09

 

“Remember!–It is Christianity to do good always–even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbours as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts, and never make a boast of them or of our prayers or of our love of God, but always to show that we love Him by humbly trying to do right in everything. If we do this, and remember the life and lessons of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and try to act up to them, we may confidently hope that God will forgive us our sins and mistakes, and enable us to live and die in peace.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

“I must do something or I shall wear my heart away…”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

“I know that she deserves the best and purest love the heart of man can offer,” said Mrs. Maylie; “I know that the devotion and affection of her nature require no ordinary return, but one that shall be deep and lasting.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

“Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

“I do not know the American gentleman, God forgive me for putting two such words together.”
― Charles Dickens

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 09

 

 

 

 

“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

“Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it’s blowing up; and then they lengthens it out.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

“A very little key will open a very heavy door.”
― Charles Dickens, Hunted Down

 

 

“So, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.”

― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

“You must know,’ said Estella, condescending to me as a beautiful and brilliant woman might, ‘that I have no heart—if that has anything to do with my memory.’
I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the liberty of doubting that. That I knew better. That there could be no such beauty without it.
‘Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt,’ said Estella, ‘and, of course, if it ceased to beat I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense.’
… ‘I am serious,’ said Estella, not so much with a frown (for her brow was smooth) as with a darkening of her face; ‘If we are to be thrown much together, you had better believe it at once. No!’ imperiously stopping me as I opened my lips. ‘I have not bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such thing.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

“Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

 

“Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

“I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“every idiot who goes about with a ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

“New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

“It is required of every man,” the ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

“Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 10
Charles dickens quotes

 

“She was the most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from one story to another was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

“If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

“He was consious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares, long, long, forgotten.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

“There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

“Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 10

 

 

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

“Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

“Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 10

 

“And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that [Christmas] has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable, honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world, but it is very possible to know how it has touched one’s self in going by.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

 

“Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers, and are famous preservers of good looks.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

“He would make a lovely corpse.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

 

 

“You fear the world too much,’ she answered gently. ‘All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off, one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“I loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I loved you madly.”
― Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood

 

 

 

“The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do I believe when we go back to them”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

“One should never be ashamed to cry. Tears are rain on the dust of earth.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“She had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very good.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“It was all Mrs. Bumble. She would do it,” urged Mr. Bumble; first looking round, to ascertain that his partner had left the room.

That is no excuse,” returned Mr. Brownlow. “You were present on the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and, indeed, are the more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.”

If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass — a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 11

 

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

“Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“And still I stood looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, but always miserable.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“Try not to associate bodily defect with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“If Husain (as) had fought to quench his worldly desires…then I do not understand why his sister, wife, and children accompanied him. It stands to reason therefore, that he sacrificed purely for Islam.”
― Charles Dickens
“A word in earnest is as good as a speech.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House
“Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times
“هناك كتب .. غلافـها أفضل ما فيها”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
“So new to him,” she muttered, “so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us!…”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“It is no small thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us. ”
― Charles Dickens
“Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House
“You are too young to know how the world changes everyday,’ said Mrs Creakle, ‘and how the people in it pass away. But we all have to learn it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when we are old, some of us at all times in our lives.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
“Janet! Donkeys!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Charles Dickens Quotes Part 11
“Take the pencil and write under my name, ‘I forgive her.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“I never had one hour’s happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once won, goes through fire and water for the winner, and never changes, and is never daunted.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

 

“There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes, which, while it holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things about it, and enable it to ramble at its pleasure. So far as an overpowering heaviness, a prostration of strength, and an utter inability to control our thoughts or power of motion, can be called sleep, this is it; and yet we have a consciousness of all that is going on about us; and if we dream at such a time, words which are really spoken, or sounds which really exist at the moment, accommodate themselves with surprising readiness to our visions, until reality and imagination become so strangely blended that it is afterwards almost a matter of impossibilty to separate the two. Nor is this, the most striking phenomenon, incidental to such a state. It is an undoubted fact, that although our senses of touch and sight be for the time dead, yet our sleeping thoughts, and the visionary scenes that pass before us, will be influenced, and materially influenced, by the mere silent presence of some external object: which may not have been near us when we closed our eyes: and of whose vicinity we have had no waking consciousness. ”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

“All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

 

“Come in, — come in! and know me better, man! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me! You have never seen the like of me before!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“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.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“Marley was dead, to begin with … This must be distintly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 12

 

“. . . in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker . . .”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over? Because, if it is to spite her, I should think – but you know best – that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think – but you know best – she was not worth gaining over.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“These books were a way of escaping from the unhappiness of my life.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own lone quite path-for him.

~ Stephen speaking of Rachael”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

 

“if the world go wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never meant to go right.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

“Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred. A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment. Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

“There are very few moments in a man’s existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

 

“Yes. He is quite a good fellow – nobody’s enemy but his own.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 12
Charles dickens quotes

 

“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die?”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“I begin to think,’ said Estella, in a musing way, after another moment of calm wonder, ‘that I almost understand how this comes about. If you had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in the dark confinement of these rooms, and had never let her know that there was such a thing as the daylight by which she has never once seen your face―if you had done that, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to understand the daylight and know all about it, you would have been disappointed and angry? . . .’
Or,’ said Estella, ‘―which is a nearer case―if you had taught her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn against it, for it had blighted you and would else blight her―if you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you would have been disappointed and angry? . . .’
So,’ said Estella, ‘I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

 

“We were equals afterwards, as we had been before; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking about him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“Scattered wits take a long time in picking up.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“The universe makes rather an indifferent parent, I’m afraid.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 13

 

“I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

“For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“it is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

 

 

“But, in this separation I associate you only with the good and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you have done far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 13

 

 

“But, tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble’s soul; his heart was waterproof.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

“There can’t be a quarrel without two parties, and I won’t be one. I will be a friend to you in spite of you. So now you know what you’ve got to expect”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

“It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen’s case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of somebody else’s thorns in addition to his own.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

 

 

“Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

 

 

 

 

“All partings foreshadow the great final one.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House 

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 13

 

 

“My dear if you could give me a cup of tea to clear my muddle of a head I should better understand your affairs.”
― Charles Dickens, Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 14

 

 

“And this is the eternal law. For, Evil often stops short at istelf and dies with the doer of it! but Good, never.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

 

 

“The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up for ever on my best affections. Deep affliction has only made them stronger; it ought, I think, for it should refine our nature.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

 

“He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

 

 

 

“It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I stopped my most unwilling hand. Nothing can undo it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was. ”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

 

“[S]he stood for some moments gazing at the sisters, with affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.”
― Charles Dickens , Martin Chuzzlewit

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 14

 

 

 

“Morning drew on apace. The air became more sharp and piercing, as its first dull hue: the death of night, rather than the birth of day: glimmered faintly in the sky. The objects which had looked dim and terrible in the darkness, grew more and more defined, and gradually resolved into their familiar shapes. The rain came down, thick and fast; and pattered, noisily, among the leafless bushes.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

 

 

 

 

“While the flowers, pale and unreal in the moonlight, floated away upon the river; and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the eternal sea.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

 

 

 

“I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than I had supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never have done to have an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of all the High Street. I whistled and made nothing of going. But the village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into tears.
We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

 

“I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 14

 

 

“The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery having been unexpected, and attempted in the night-time; as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact business at noon, and to make an appointment, by the twopenny post, a day or two previous.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

 

“It will be your duty, and it will be your pleasure too to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities that she has, and not by the qualities she may not have.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

 

“There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

 

“Estella was the inspiration of it, and the heart of it, of course. But, though she had taken such strong possession of me, though my fancy and my hope were so set upon her, though her influence on my boyish life and character had been all-powerful, I did not, even that romantic morning, invest her with any attributes save those she possessed. I mention this in this place, of a fixed purpose, because it is the clue by which I am to be followed into my poor labyrinth. According to my experience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot be always true. The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 15

 

 

 

“[W]e talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannise over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occassions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them. And as individuals get into trouble by making too great a show of liveries, or as slaves when they are too numerous rise against their masters, so I think I could mention a nation that has got into many great difficulties, and will get into many greater, from maintaining too large a retinue of words.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

 

“A new heart for a New Year, always!”
― Charles Dickens, The Chimes

 

 

 

 

“And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death. And O what a bright old song it is, that O ’tis love, ’tis love, ’tis love that makes the world go round!”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 15

 

 

“There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last respect a rather common one.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“If you can’t get to be uncommon through going straight, you’ll never get to do it through going crooked. […] live well and die happy.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“Your tale is of the longest,” observed Monks, moving restlessly in his chair.

It is a true tale of grief and trial, and sorrow, young man,” returned Mr. Brownlow, “and such tales usually are; if it were one of unmixed joy and happiness, it would be very brief.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

 

“People like us don’t go out at night cause people like them see us for what we are”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 15

 

“It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think, as I have observed it to be considered since. I have known it very fashionable indeed. I have seen it displayed with such success, that I have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

“[She wasn’t] a logically reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in heaven as high as heads.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

 

“It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper, said Mr. Bumble. So cry away.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

“I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight for me.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

“Depth answers only to depth .”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 16

 

“My dear child,’ said the old gentleman, moved by the warmth of Oliver’s sudden appeal, ‘you need not be afraid of my deserting you, unless you give me cause.’
I never, never will, sir,’ interposed Oliver.
I hope not,’ rejoined the old gentleman; ‘I do not think you ever will. I have been deceived before, in the objects whom I have endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you, nevertheless, and more strongly interested in your behalf than I can well account for, even to myself. The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up for ever on my best affections. Deep affliction has only made them stronger; it ought, I think, for it should refine our nature.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

 

“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river where it flows among green airs and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city…. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

“I verily believe that her not remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly – and that is the sharpest crying of all.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

 

“Most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

 

“We need be careful how we deal with those about us, when every death carries to some small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much omitted, and so little done- of so many things forgotten, and so many more which might have been repaired! There is no remorse so deep as that which is unavailing; if we would be spared its tortures, let us remember this, in time.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 16

 

 

 

 

“And yet I love him. I love him so much and so dearly, that when I sometimes think my life may be but a weary one, I am proud of it and glad of it. I am proud and glad to suffer something for him, even though it is of no service to him, and he will never know of it or care for it.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

 

“I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men’s sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 16

 

“I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuadinig arguments of my best friends.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

 

“This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 17

 

 

“The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

“If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up! If I spoke a gentle word in your hearing, may it deafen you! If I touched you with my lips, may the touch be poison to you! A curse upon this roof that gave me shelter! Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon all belonging to you!”
― Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

 

 

 

“Mrs Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her clenliness more umcomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 17

“It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

 

 

“Don’t be afraid! We won’t make an author of you, while there’s an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

“No one is useless in this world,’ retorted the Secretary, ‘who lightens the burden of it for any one else.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

“You have been in every line I have ever read.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 17

 

 

“We went our several ways,” said Lady Dedlock, “and had little in common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I suppose, but it could not be helped.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

“I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall do till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

“Be guided, only by the healer of the sick, the raiser of the dead, the friend of all who were afflicted and forlorn, the patient Master who shed tears of compassion for our infirmities. We cannot but be right if we put all the rest away, and do everything in remembrance of Him. There is no vengeance and no infliction of suffering in His life, I am sure. There can be no confusion in following Him, and seeking for no other footsteps, I am certain!”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

 

 

“So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you!”
― Charles Dickens, The Chimes

 

“Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed and fed to draw round the bright fire, and thank God they were at home; and for the homeless starving wretch to lay him down and die. Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our bare streets at such times, who, let their crimes have been what they may, can hardly open them in a more bitter world.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 18

 

“Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and without punctuation, but not much to tell.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

 

“As all partings foreshadow the great final one, – so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper what your room and what mine must one day be.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

“You talk very easily of hours, sir! How long do you suppose, sir, that an hour is to a man who is choking for want of air?”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

 

 

“Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the world around us, should be active with us, not less than our own experiences, for all good.”
― Charles Dickens, The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain

 

 

 

“and it was not until I began to think, that I began fully to know how wrecked I was, and how the ship in which I had sailed was gone to pieces.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“We spent as much money as we could and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“what I want you to be – I don’t mean physically but morally: you are very well physically – is a firm fellow, a fine firm fellow, with a will of your own, with resolution. with determination. with strength of character that is not to be influenced except on good reason by anybody, or by anything. That’s what I want you to be. That’s what your father, & your mother might both have been”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 18

 

“Christmas is a poor excuse every 25th of December to pick a man’s pockets.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues — faith and hope.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

“Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?”
― Charles Dickens

 

“The agony is exquisite, is it not? A broken heart. You think you will die. But you just keep living. Day after day, after terrible day.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“the sight of me is good for sore eyes”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 18

 

“and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves as one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read since I first [met you]. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since,—on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation, I associate you only with the good; and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“Meow says the cat ,quack says the duck , Bow wow wow says the dog !
Grrrr!”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 19

 

“In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“And thus ever by day and night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

 

 

“This reminds me, Godmother, to ask you a serious question. You are as wise as wise can be (having been brought up by the fairies), and you can tell me this: Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

 

“Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came; and if the village had been beautiful at first, it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health; and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched out beyond. The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was the prime and vigour of the year; all things were glad and flourishing.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

 

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 19

“Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak in which–the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through, with her basket–Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out the Wolf in the Noah’s Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Tree

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“He lived in chambers that had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 19

 

“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is noth-ing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes tocondemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“From the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly. As he now leaned back in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in his turn, perhaps he might have seen one wavering moment in her, when she was impelled to throw herself upon his breast, and give him the pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it, he must have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many years been erecting, between himself and all those subtle essences of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck. The barriers were too many and too high for such a leap. With his unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again; and the moment shot away into the plumbless depths of the past, to mingle with all the lost opportunities that are drowned there.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

 

 

“He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but little with other men, and used to companionship with his own thoughts. He had never known before the strength of the want in his heart for the frequent recognition of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense amount of relief that had been poured into it by drops through such small means.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 20

 

“The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shews in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven: and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

“There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your senses wrapt in perfect unconsciousness. At such time, a mortal knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to form some glimmering conception of its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and spurning time and space, when freed from the restraint of its corporeal associate.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

“My sister’s bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand, gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and very sensitive.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 20

 

“-Why don’t you cry again, you little wretch?
-Because I’ll never cry for you again.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 20

 

“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 21

 

“I want to escape from myself. For when I do start up and stare myself seedily in the face, as happens to be my case at present, my blankness is inconceivable–indescribable–my misery amazing.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

 

“The purpose was, that I would go to Biddy, that I would show her how humbled and repentant I came back, that I would tell her how I had lost all I once hoped for, that I would remind her of our old confidences in my first unhappy time. Then, I would say to her, “Biddy, I think you once liked me very well, when my errant heart, even while it strayed away from you, was quieter and better with you than it ever has been since. If you can like me only half as well once more, if you can take me with all my faults and disappointments on my head, if you can receive me like a forgiven child (and indeed I am so sorry, Biddy, and have as much need of a hushing voice and a soothing hand), I hope I am a little worthier of you than I was –not much, but a little. And Biddy, it shall rest with you to say whether I shall work at the forge with Joe, or whether I shall try for any different occupation down in this country, or whether we shall go away to a distant place where an opportunity awaits me, which I set aside when it was offered, until I knew your answer. And now, dear Biddy, if you can tell me that you will go through the world with me, you will surely make it a better world for me, and me a better man for it, and I will try hard to make it a better world for you.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 21

 

“I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt, and, of course, if it ceased to beat, I would cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 21

 

“I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and God.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

“it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

 

“Any capitalist . . . who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn’t each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every one for not accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why don’t you go and do it?”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

 

 

“And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains.

I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.

My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.

O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 22

 

“It was the shadow of Some one who had gone by long before: of Some one who had gone on far away quite out of reach, never, never to come back. It was bright to look at; and when the tiny woman showed it to the Princess, she was proud of it with all her heart, as a great, great, treasure. When the Princess had considered it a little while, she said to the tiny woman, And you keep watch over this, every day? And she cast down her eyes, and whispered, Yes. Then the Princess said, Remind me why. To which the other replied, that no one so good and so kind had ever passed that way, and that was why in the beginning. She said, too, that nobody missed it, that nobody was the worse for it, that Some one had gone on to those who were expecting him–

‘Some one was a man then?’ interposed Maggy.

Little Dorrit timidly said yes, she believed so; and resumed:

‘– Had gone on to those who were expecting him, and that this remembrance
was stolen or kept back from nobody. The Princess made answer, Ah! But when the cottager died it would be discovered there. The tiny woman told her No; when that time came, it would sink quietly into her own grave, and would never be found.”
― Charles Dickens , Little Dorrit

 

 

 

 

“Alas ! How few of Nature’s faces are left alone to gladden us with their beauty ! The cares, and sorrows, and the hungerings, of the world, change them as they change hearts; and it is only when those passions sleep, and have lost their hold for ever, that the troubled clouds pass off, and leave Heaven’s surface clear. It is a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside into the long-forgotten expression of sleeping infancy, and settle into the very look of early life; so calm, so peaceful, do they grow again, that those who knew them in their happy childhood, kneel by the coffin’s side in awe, and see the Angel even upon earth.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

“The last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 22

 

“Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“إنه كان أحسن الأزمان وكان أسوأ الأزمان .. كان عصر الحكمة وكان عصر الجهالة .. كان عهد اليقين والإيمان وكان عهد الحيرة والشكوك .. كان أوان النور وكان أوان الظلام .. كان ربيع الرجاء وكان زمهرير القنوط .. بين أيدينا كل شيء وليس في أيدينا أي شيء .. وسبيلنا جميعا إلى سماء عليين، وسبيلنا جميعا إلى قرار الجحيم. تلك أيام كأيامنا هذه التي يوصينا الصاخبون من ثقاتها أن نأخذها على علاتها، والا نذكرها إلا بصيغة المبالغة فيما اشتملت عليه من طيبات ومن آفات // في زمن الثورة الفرنسية”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 

“She forgot to be shy at the moment, in honestly warning him away
from the sunken wreck he had a dream of raising; and looked at him
with eyes which assuredly, in association with her patient face,
her fragile figure, her spare dress, and the wind and rain, did not
turn him from his purpose of helping her.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

 

 

“My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 22

 

 

 

 

 

“things cannot be expected to turn up of themselves. We must in a measure assist to turn them up”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

“And O
there are days
i this life,
worth life and
worth death”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

“When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man, to have so inexhaustible a subject.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 23

 

“Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal.”
― Dickens, Charles, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind Junior.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

 

 

“Least said, soonest mended”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

“Are tears the dewdrops of the heart?”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

“You have been so careful of me that I never had a child’s heart.
You have trained me so well that I never dreamed a child’s dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, Father ,from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child’s belief or a child’s fear.
Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this testimony to it. ” My dear Louisa,” said he, you abundantly repay my care. Kiss me, my dear girl.”
― charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 23

 

“a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places and not quite so loose in others.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are,” replied the girl steadily, “give away your hearts, love will carry you all lengths–even such as you, who have home, friends, other admireres, everything to fill them. When such as I, who have no certain roof but the coffin-lid, and no friend in sickness or death but the hospital nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place that has been a blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to cure us? Pity us, lady–pity us for having only one feeling of the woman left, and for having that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort and a pride, into a new means of violence and suffering.”
― Charles Dickens

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 23

 

“Her heart–is given him, with all its love and truth. She would joyfully die with him, or better than that, die for him. She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and think well of. And she says, that lady rich and beautiful that I can never come near, ‘Only put me in that empty place, only try how little I mind myself, only prove what a world of things I will do and bear for you, and I hope that you might even come to be so much better than you are, through me who am so much worse, and hardly worth the thinking of beside you.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

“In journeys, as in life, it is a great deal easier to go down hill than up”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

“Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures,” replied Estella, with a glance towards him, “hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?”
― Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 24

 

 

“Mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily express itself. Its voice is low. It is modest and retiring, it lies in ambush, waits and waits. Such is the mature fruit. Sometimes a life glides away, and finds it still ripening in the shade.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry–I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart–God knows what its name was–that tears started to my eyes.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

“As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon his forehead.
The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known; as a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odour of a flower, or even the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were, in this life; which vanish like a breath; and which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have awakened, for no voluntary exertion of the mind can ever recall them.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

“External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 24

 

 

“Lovers had loved before, and lovers would love again; but no lover had ever loved, might, could, would, or should ever love, as I loved Dora.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“It is the most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“Sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, ” I cannot say that i have heard him precisely snore, and therefore must not make that statement. But on winter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at his table, I have heard him, what I should prefer to describe as partially choke. I have heard him on such occasions produce sounds of a nature similar to what may be heard in dutch clocks. Not,” said Mrs. Sparsit, with a lofty sense of giving strict evidence, ” That I would convey any imputation on his moral character. Far from it.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

 

 

“It can’t be supposed,” said Joe. “Tho’ I’m oncommon fond of reading, too.”
Are you, Joe?”
Oncommon. Give me,” said Joe, “a good book, or a good newspaper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!” he continued, after rubbing his knees a little, “when you do come to a J and a O, and says you, ‘Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,’ how interesting reading is!”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

“My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 24

 

“Thus violent deeds live after men upon the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will survive in mournful shapes long after those who worked the desolation are but atoms of earth themselves.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

 

“All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money!”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far we are pursued by nothing else.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 25

 

“You cannot stain a black coat”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

“Are you thankful for not being young?’
‘Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again, and the end would be a weary way off, don’t you see?…”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

 

“He was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“May you have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

 

“Then I’m sorry to say, I’ve eat your pie.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

 

 

 

“But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 25

 

“I don’t feel any vulgar gratitude to you[for helping me]. I almost feel as if You ought to be grateful to ME, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. . . I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by giving you an opportunity of assisting me. ”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

“But I am thinking like a lover, or like an ass: which I suppose is pretty nearly the same.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

 

“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!” “Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge. “Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

 

“It is only half an hour’–’It is only an afternoon’–’It is only an evening,’ people say to me over and over again; but they don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes–or that the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometime worry a whole day… Who ever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and to find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can’t help it; I must go in my way whether or no.”
― Charles Dickens rejecting an invitation from a friend

 

 

 

“The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world.”
― Charles Dickens

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 25

 

“Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.”
― Dickens, Charles

 

“It would seem as if there never was a book written, or a story told, expressly with the object of keeping boys on shore, which did not lure and charm them to the ocean, as a matter of course.”
― Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

 

 

 

“it’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“Spring is the time of the year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“…I hope that simple love and truth will be strong in the end. I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 26

 

 

“Mr. Dick, give me your hand, for your common sense is invaluable.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“What connexion can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

“I wish you to know you have been the last dream of my soul. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing…

But I wish you to know that you inspired it. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into the fire.”
― Charles Dickens

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 26

 

“How beautiful you are! You are more beautiful in anger than in repose. I don’t ask you for your love; give me yourself and your hatred; give me yourself and that pretty rage; give me yourself and that enchanting scorn; it will be enough for me.”
― Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood

 

 

 

“In short, I should have liked to have had the lightest license of a child, and yet be man enough to know its value”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“At last, however, he began to think — as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too . . .”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“Gentlemen,” returned Mr. Micawber, “do with me as you will! I am a straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by the elephants- I beg your pardon; I should have said the elements.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

“‎”إنك أذا وضعت هذه الساعة في السجن، فإن الزمن لن يتوقف يا سيدي !”
― Charles Dickens, أوقات صعبة

 

 

 

“Gentlemen,” returned Mr. Micawber, “do with me as you will! I am a straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by the elephants- I beg your pardon; I should have said the elements.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

“what was over couldn’t be begun, and what couldn’t be cured must be endured;”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

“It’s a bad job,” he said, when I had done; “but the sun sets every day, and people die every minute, and we mustn’t be scared by the common lot. If we failed to hold our own, because that equal foot at all men’s doors was heard knocking somewhere, every object in this world would slip from us. No! Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,’ said Cleopatra, ‘with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated!”
― Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

 

 

 

“I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But I felt the kiss was given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and that it was worth nothing.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.’ Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

 

 

“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 27

“I could settle down into a state of
equable low spirits, and resign myself to coffee.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“Family need not be defined merely as those with whom we share blood, but as those for whom we would give our blood.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

“It is the fate of most men who mingle with the world, and attain even the prime of life, to make many real friends, and lose them in the course of nature. It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the full extent of their misfortunes; for they are required to furnish an account of them besides.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

 

 

“Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human natur.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 27

 

“what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

“The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.’ Consider nothing impossible, then treat the possibilites as probabilities.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

 

“…and memory, however sad, is the best and purest link between this world and a better. But come! I’ll tell you a story of another kind.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

 

“and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

 

 

“Are there no prisons?”
― Dickens, Charles, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“Joe gave me some more gravy.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 28

 

“The secret was such an old one now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not tear it away.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was – anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

 

“She dotes on poetry, sir. She adores it; I may say that her whole soul and mind are wound up, and entwined with it. She has produced some delightful pieces, herself, sir. You may have met with her ‘Ode to an Expiring Frog,’ sir.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

 

 

 

“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there’s been any fault at all to-day, it’s mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th’ meshes. You won’t find half so much fault in me if you think me in forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won’t find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so God bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, God bless you!”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 28

 

 

“And what an example of the power of dress young Oliver Twist was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar;—it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have fixed his station in society. But now he was enveloped in the old calico robes, that had grown yellow in the same service; he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once—a parish child—the orphan of a workhouse—the humble, half-starved drudge—to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, despised by all, and pitied by none.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

 

“All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was – anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

 

“The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

 

 

“This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for not playing the flute; or, in other words, for begging in the streets, and doing noting for his livelihood. In the next cell, was another man, who was going to the same prison for hawking tin saucepans without a licence; thereby doing something for his living, in defiance of the Stamp-office.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

“He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice favour runs in favour of two.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 28

 

 

“Dickens writes that an event, “began to be forgotten, as most affairs are, when wonder, having no fresh food to support it, dies away of itself.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused—in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened—by the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened incomes—of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the world who cannot call up such thoughts any day of the year. Then do not select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire—fill the glass and send round the song—and if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it offhand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it’s no worse.”
― Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz

 

“why should I seek to change, what has been so precious to me for so long! you can never show better than as your own natural self”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“And it is not a slight thing when we are loved by those so fresh from God.”
― Dickens, Charles

 

“On the eve of long voyages or an absence of many years, friends who are tenderly attached will seperate with the usual look, the usual pressure of the hand, planning one final interview for the morrow, while each well knows that it is but a poor feint to save the pain of uttering that one word, and the meeting will never be. Should possibilities be worse to bear than certainties?”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

 

“I will live in the past, the present, and the future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“For our path in life…is stony and rugged now, and it rests with us to smooth it. We must fight our way onward. We must be brave. There are obstacles to be met, and we must meet, and crush them!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“Well, Pip,’ said Joe, ‘be it so or be it son’t, you must be a scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, I should hope! The king upon his throne, with his crown upon his ed, can’t sit and write his acts of Parliament in print, without having begun, when he were a unpromoted Prince, with the alphabet – Ah!’ added Joe, with a shake of the head that was full of meaning. ‘and begun at A too, and worked his way to Z. And I know what that is to do, though I can’t say I’ve exactly done it.’
There was some hope in this piece of wisdom, and it rather encouraged me.
‘Whether common ones as to callings and earnings,’ pursued Joe reflectively, ‘mightn’t be the better of continuing for to keep company with common ones, instead of going out to play with oncommon ones – which reminds me to hope there were a flag, perhaps?’
‘No, Joe.’
‘(I’m sorry there weren’t a flag, Pip.) Whether that might be or mightn’t be, is a thing as can’t be looked into now, without putting your sister on the Rampage; and that’s a thing not to be thought of, as being done intentional. Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you by a true friend. Which this to you the true friend say. If you can’t get to be oncommon through going straight, you’ll never get to do it through going crooked. So don’t tell no more on ‘em, Pip, and live well and die happy.’

Chapter 9”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

 

“Thus two people who cannot afford to play cards for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game for love.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

 

“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 29

 

“In truth she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even her wonder until now.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

“But the sun itself, however beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engendering more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself become an evil eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed between it and the thing it looks upon to bless.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

 

 

 

“You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me. But if you would return a favorable answer to my offer of myself in marriage, you could draw me to any good – every good – with equal force.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

 

 

“…and to-morrow looked in my face more steadily than I could look at it”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

 

“External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely and Scrooge never did.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 30

 

 

“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!”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

 

“If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,” returned the Ghost, “will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.

“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

 

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”
“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? what reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

 

“I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 30

 

 

“The only difference between us and the professors of virtue or benevolence, or philanthropy – never mind the name – is that we know it is all meaningless, and say so, while they know it equally and will never say so.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

 

 

 

“It’s always something, to know you’ve done the most you could. But, don’t leave off hoping, or it’s of no use doing anything. Hope, hope to the last!”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

 

 

“The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid for the turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again and chuckled till he cried.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

 

“Everything that Mr Smallweed’s grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

 

“Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 30

 

 

“Listlessness to everything, but brooding sorrow, was the night that fell on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up from it – as at last I did, thank Heaven! – and from its long, sad, wretched dream, to dawn.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

“We think the feelings that are very serious in a man quite comical in a boy.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

“The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of truer metal and bear the stamp of Heaven.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

 

“It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when the Great Creator was a child himself.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings

 

“He had been educated in no habits of application and concentration. The system which had addressed him in exactly the same manner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, all varying in character and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his tasks, always with fair credit and often with distinction, but in a fitful, dazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very qualities in himself which it had been most desirable to direct and train. They were good qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously won, but like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were very bad masters. If they had been under Richard’s direction, they would have been his friends; but Richard being under their direction, they became his enemies.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

“The carpenter’s daughter has won a name for herself, and deserved to win it”
― Charles Dickens, Contributions To All The Year Round

 

 

 

“I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle’s Roman nose so aggravated me, during the recital of my misdemeanours, that I should have liked to pull it until he howled.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

“Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.”
― Charles Dickens

 

 

 

“I have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can’t beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry it.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

 

“Nothingever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the onset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have a malady in the less attractive forms.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

“Mystery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

 

“The privileges of the side-table included the small prerogatives of sitting next to the toast, and taking two cups of tea to other people’s one.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

 

 

 

“You hear, Eugene?’ said Lightwood over his shoulder. ‘You are deeply interested in lime.’
‘Without lime,’ returned that unmoved barrister at law, ‘my existence would be unilluminated by a ray of hope.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

“Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“When a plunge is to be made into the water, it’s of no use lingering on the bank.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as lambs in all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are dead certain to collar it, if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to you ‘In worldly matters I’m a child,’ you consider that that person is only a crying off from being held accountable, and that you have got that person’s number, and it’s Number One. Now, I am not a poetical man myself, except in a vocal way, when it goes round a company, but I’m a practical one, and that’s my experience. So’s this rule. Fast and loose in one thing, Fast and loose in everything. I never knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

“There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

 

 

“Dios sabe que nunca hemos de avergonzarnos de nuestras lágrimas, porque son la lluvia que limpia el cegador polvo de la tierra que recubre nuestros corazones endurecidos.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 31

 

“Pip, dear old chap. life is made of ever many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith and one’s a whitesmith, one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through. Enough love might have been wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking, to drown anybody in; and yet there would have remained enough within me, and all over me, to pervade my entire existence.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“Come! Let us make that bargain. Think of me at my best, if circumstances should ever part us!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

 

 

“The broken heart. You think you will die, but you keep living, day after day after terrible day.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never learn to do their duty to us”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“They’ll not blame me. They’ll not object to me. They’ll not mind what I do, if it’s wrong. I’m only Mr. Dick.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“he is a confoundedly bad kind of man. He is a slow-torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood than a rusty old carbine is. He is a kind of man―by George!―that has caused more restlessness, and more uneasiness, and more dissatisfaction with myself than all other men put together. That’s the kind of man Mr. Tulkinghorn is!”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

“Mrs General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails on which she started little trains of other people’s opinions, which never overtook one another, and never got anywhere.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

“Man is but mortal; and there is a point beyond which human courage cannot extend.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

“Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite … Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families … and you have no idea … what games goes on!”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

 

“Sudden shifts and changes are no bad preparation for political life.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

 

“What do you mean, Phib?” asked Miss Squeers, looking in her own little glass, where, like most of us, she saw – not herself, but the reflection of some pleasant image in her own brain.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

 

“Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives, the life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of friends”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 32

 

“if I was a painter, and was to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it?…I should want to draw it like a Bat, for its short-sightedness; like a Bantam. for its bragging; like a Magpie, for its honesty; like a Peacock, for its vanity; like an Ostrich, for putting its head in the mud, and thinking nobody sees it -‘ …’And like a Phoenix, for its power of springing from the ashes of its faults and vices, and soaring up anew into the sky!”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

 

 

“The simple fact was, that Oliver, instead of possessing too little feeling, possessed rather too much, and was in a fair way of being reduced to a state of brutal stupidity and sullenness for life, by the ill usage he had received.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“The fire? It has been alive as long as I have. We talk and think together all night long. It’s like a book to me – the only book I ever learned to read; and many an old story it tells me. It’s music, for I should know its voice among a thousand, and there are other voices in its roar. It has its pictures too. You don’t know how many strange faces and different scenes I trace in the red-hot coals. It’s my memory, that fire, and shows me all my life.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“The simple fact was, that Oliver, instead of possessing too little feeling, possessed rather too much, and was in a fair way of being reduced to a state of brutal stupidity and sullenness for life, by the ill usage he had received.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“Every man thinks his own geese swans.”
― Charles Dickens, The Cricket on the Hearth

“I never heard that it had been anybody’s business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to him. He had been adapted to the verses and had learnt the art of making them to such perfection. I did doubt whether Richard would not have profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his studying them quite so much.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 33

 

 

“It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“The two commonest mistakes in judgement … are, the confounding of shyness with arrogance – a very common mistake indeed – and the not understanding that an obstinate nature exists in a perpetual struggle with itself.”
― Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

“And what’s the best of all,” he said, “you’ve been more comfortable alonger me, since I was under a dark cloud, than when the sun shone. That’s the best of all.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“I am in a ridiculous humour,’ quoth Eugene; ‘I am a ridiculous fellow. Everything is ridiculous. Come along!”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

“Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial scheme again, Mr. Darnay?”
“I am frightfully confused regarding time and place, but I am so far mended as to feel that.”
“It must be an immense satisfaction!”
He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again: which was a large one.
“As to me, the greatest desire I have is to forget that I belong to it. It has no good in it for me–except wine like this–nor I for it. So we are not much alike in that particular. Indeed, I begin to think we are not much alike in any particular, you and I.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 

“Can I view thee panting, lying
On thy stomach, without sighing;
Can I unmoved see thee dying
On a log
Expiring frog!”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 33

 

“I was only going to say,” said Scrooge’s nephew, “that the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can’t help thinking better of it—I defy him—if he finds me going there in good temper, year after year, and saying, ‘Uncle Scrooge, how are you?’ If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, that’s something.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“There is something indefinably keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in ill humor and near knives.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

“I never thought before, that there was a woman in the world who could affect me so much by saying so little. But don’t be hard in your construction of me. You don’t know what my state of mind towards you is. You don’t know how you haunt and bewilder me. You don’t know how the cursed carelessness that is over-officious in helping me at every other turning of my life WON’T help me here. You have struck it dead, I think, and I sometimes wish you had struck me dead along with it.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 33

 

“Oh! if, when we oppress and grind our fellow-creatures, we bestowed but one thought on the dark evidences of human error, which, like dense and heavy clouds, are rising, slowly it is true, but not less surely, to Heaven, to pour their after-vengeance on our heads; if we heard but one instant, in imagination, the deep testimony of the dead men’s voices, which no power can stifle, and no pride shut out; where would be the injury and injustice: the suffering, misery, cruelty, and wrong: that each day’s life brings with it!”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr. Bounderby looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising anybody. He had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off; and that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

“Be guided only by the healer of the sick, the raiser of the dead, the friend of all who were afflicted and forlorn, the patient Master who shed tears of compassion for our infirmities.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

“I remember him as something left behind upon the road of life—as something I have passed, rather than have actually been—and almost think of him as of someone else.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 34

 

“The important thing is this: to be ready at any moment to sacrifice what you are for what you could become.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“for not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent’s love.”
― Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

 

“You are a young man,” she said, nodding. “Take a word of advice, even from three foot nothing. Try not to associate bodily defects with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 34

 

“Now you see, Tom,” said Mr. Harthouse (…); “every man is selfish in everything he does, and I am exactly like the rest of my fellow-creatures.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

“As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty in our way, little Em’ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 34

 

“The society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield. It’s not professional, but it’s very delightful.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“My dear young lady, crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“Your haughty religious people would have held their heads up to see me as I am tonight, and preached of flames and vengeance,’ cried the girl. ‘Oh, dear lady, why ar’n’t those who claim to be God’s own folks as gentle and as kind to us poor wretches as you, who, having youth, and beauty, and all that they have lost, might be a little proud instead of so much humbler?”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

“the dreams of childhood – it’s airy fables, its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond; so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown…”
― charles dickens

 

“He was always so zealous and honorable in fulfilling his compact with me, that he made me zealous and honorable in fulfilling mine with him. If he had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have returned the compliment as a pupil. He gave me no such excuse, and each of us did the other justice.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 35

 

“My name is on the first leaf. If you can ever write under my name, “I forgive her,” though ever so long after my broken heart is dust pray do it!”

 

“O Miss Havisham,” said I, “I can do it now. There have been sore mistakes; and my life has been a blind and thankless one; and I want forgiveness and direction far too much, to be bitter with you.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“First, not a word more from you about the past. There was an error in your calculations. I know what that is. It affects the whole machine, and failure is the consequence. You will profit by the failure, and will avoid it another time. I have done a similar thing myself, in construction, often. Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn; and you are too sensible a man not to learn from this failure.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 35

 

“Then idiots talk….of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such parrot gabble! What the deuce!….But show me a good opportunity, show me something really worth being energetic about, and I’ll show you energy.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“Because thou hast made the Lord, which is thy refuge, even the most high they habitation. There shall be no evil before thee, neither shall any plague come by thy dwelling. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him.”
-Peter Cratchit”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms.

His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him. He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“I have often remarked- I suppose everybody has- that one’s going away from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for a change in it.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 35

 

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 

“But he is only stunned by the unvanquishable difficulty of his existence.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

 

“Time has been lost and opportunity thrown away, but I am yet a young man, and may retrieve it.”
― Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge

 

“was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn’t get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

 

“When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to
peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find
such a blessed sense of rest!”
― Charles Dickens

 

“…[their] children were not growing up or being brought up, but were tumbling up.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Drunkenness – that fierce rage for the slow, sure poison, that oversteps every other consideration; that casts aside wife, children, friends, happiness, and station; and hurries its victims madly on to degradation and death.”
― Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 36

 

 

“You can’t make a head and brains out of a brass knob with nothing in it. You couldn’t do it when your uncle George was living much less when he’s dead.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

“There are a good many books, are there not, my boy?” said Mr. Brownlow, observing the curiosity with which Oliver surveyed the shelves that reached from the floor to the ceiling.

“A great number, sir,” replied Oliver; “I never saw so many.”

“You shall read them if you behave well,” said the old gentleman kindly; “and you will like that, better than looking at the outsides, – that is, in some cases, because there are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

“Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn; and you are too sensible a man not to learn from this failure.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

“Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we common dogs are proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, outrage us, beat us, kill us; but we have a little pride left, sometimes.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 

“Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy, perhaps.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

“I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by and by into our lives.
“Jerry, say that my answer was, ‘RECALLED TO LIFE.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 

“It was a harder day’s journey than yesterday’s, for there were long and weary hills to climb; and in journeys, as in life, it is a great deal easier to go down hill than up. However, they kept on, with unabated perseverance, and the hill has not yet lifted its face to heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 36

 

 

“Mr F.’s Aunt, who had eaten her pie with great solemnity, and who had been elaborating some grievous scheme of injury in her mind since her first assumption of that public position on the Marshal’s steps, took the present opportunity of addressing the following Sibyllic apostrophe to the relict of her late nephew.

‘Bring him for’ard, and I’ll chuck him out o’ winder!’

Flora tried in vain to soothe the excellent woman by explaining that they were going home to dinner. Mr F.’s Aunt persisted in replying, ‘Bring him for’ard and I’ll chuck him out o’ winder!’ Having reiterated this demand an immense number of times, with a sustained glare of defiance at Little Dorrit, Mr F.’s Aunt folded her arms, and sat down in the corner of the pie-shop parlour; steadfastly refusing to budge until such time as ‘he’ should have been ‘brought for’ard,’ and the chucking portion of his destiny accomplished.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

“What am I doing? Tearing myself. My usual occupation at most times.”
― Charles Dickens

 

“I’m a straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by the elephants”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

 

“Perhaps the mourners learn to look to the blue sky by day, and to the stars by night, and to think that the dead are there, and not in graves”
― Charles Dickens

 

“I have often thought him since, like the steam hammer, that can crush a man or pat an eggshell, in his combination of strength with gentleness”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

 

 

“I saw that the bride within the bridal dress has withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 36

 

“Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.” “Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

“…a lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper
–a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make
everybody more or less uncomfortable.”
― Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge

 

 

 

 

“the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

 

 

“Fairy-land to visit, but a desert to live in”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

“What is the secret, my darling, of your being everything to all of us, as if there werre only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to have too much to do?
-Darney to Lucie”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 37

 

 

“Such is hope, Heaven’s own gift to struggling mortals; pervading, like some subtle essence from the skies, all things, both good and bad; as universal as death, and more infectious than disease!”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

 

 

 

 

“…a sea to intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of purple, set with one great flaming jewel of fire…”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

 

 

 

“The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned — would never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

 

“When they coughed, they coughed like people accustomed to be forgotten on doorsteps and in draughty passages, waiting for answers to letters in faded ink . . .”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

 

 

 

 

“… Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas, in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

 

 

“I am sorry for him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself always. Here he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won’t come and dine with us. What’s the consequence? He don’t lose much of a dinner.”

“Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,” interrupted Scrooge’s niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have been competent judges, because they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by lamp-light.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 37

 

 

“Towards that small and ghostly hour, [Mr. Cruncher] rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other fishing tackle of that nature.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 

“…the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 

“Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 

“Remember how strong we are in our happiness and how weak he is in his misery!”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 

“[T]he wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

“[S]ome score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be — as here they are — mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horse-hair warded heads against walls of words, and making a pretence of equity with serious faces ….”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes Part 37

 

“Mrs. Rouncewell holds this opinion because she considers that a family of such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. She regards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes, a genteel distinction to which the common people have no claim.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

 

“How slight a thing will disturb the equanimity of our frail minds!”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

 

 

Charles Dickens Quotes of A Tale of Two Cities

 

Charles Dickens Quotes of A Tale of Two Cities

Here are some notable quotes from “A Tale of Two Cities”:

  1. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
  2. “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”
  3. “I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.”
  4. “They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man’s face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.”
  5. “There is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you.”
  6. “Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms.”
  7. “Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, ‘Was it a dream or not?'”
  8. “Then tell the wind and fire where to stop, but don’t tell me.”
  9. “I have a great affection for the Doctor; and I know you have, as well as for Miss Manette.”
  10. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
  11. “Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,—‘Wait and hope.’”
  12. “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”
  13. “All through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.”
  14. “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.”
  15. “Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; — the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”
  16. “Through the marquis, by reason of his family, and his youth, and his education, and his youth, and his education, that I will die, and that my child will die! They tell me so.”
  17. “I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.”
  18. “If you remember, ’tis not by knowledge, but by imagination. I ask no questions and make no stipulations. It is enough that I place before the world a note and a portrait, the like of which has never been known.”
  19. “Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.”
  20. “Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof shuts out the sky.”
  21. “if he had had any such exalted expectation, he would not have prospered. He had expected labour, and he found it, and did it and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity consisted.”
  22. “me, though he had business relations with me many years ago, and we are now intimate; I will say with the fair daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and who is so devotedly attached to him? Believe me, Miss Pross, I don’t approach the topic with you, out of curiosity, but out of zealous interest.” “Well! To the best of my understanding, and bad’s the best, you’ll tell me,” said Miss Pross, softened by the tone of the apology, “he is afraid of the whole subject.”
  23. “In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is—as the light called human life is—at its coming and its going.”
  24. “eye to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly. turned over on his back with a sepulchral cry of ‘Cuckoo!’ Since then I have been ravenless.”
  25. “A jednak byłem na tyle słaby i jestem na tyle słaby, by pragnąć, aby pani dowiedziała się, jaką władzę ma pani nade mną, że z garstki popiołu, którą jestem, zmieniam się w płomień.”
  26. “A multitude of people and yet a solitude.”
  27. “A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.”
  28. “Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself.”
  29. “Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.”
  30. “I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disninterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her.”
  31. “Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again.”
  32. “Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop,” returned madame; “but don’t tell me.”
  33. “Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.”
  34. “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life’s end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?”
  35. “Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; – the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”
  36. All through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire- a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away.”
  37. “There is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you.”
  38. “Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seeds of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.”
  39. “I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out…”
  40. “Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see triumph.”
  41. “And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done– done, see you!– under that sky there, every day.”
  42. “I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.”
  43. “The cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.”
  44. “I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.”
  45. “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!”
  46. “In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is–as the light called human life is–at its coming and its going.”
  47. “Mr. Cruncher… always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it. ”
  48. “He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart.”
  49. “REMEMBER HOW STRONG WE ARE IN OUR HAPPINESS, AND HOW WEAK HE IS IN IS MISERY!”
  50. “For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. And when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.”
  51. “You touch some of the reasons for my going, not for my staying away.”
  52. “Perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.”
  53. “Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it were not.”
  54. “So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.”
  55. “If I may ride with you, Citizen Evremonde, will you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage.” As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young fingers, and touched his lips.
    “Are you dying for him?” she whispered.
    “And his wife and child. Hush! Yes.”
    “Oh, you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?”
    “Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.”
  56. “When they took a young man into Tellson’s London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment.”
  57. “Era el mejor de los tiempos y era el peor de los tiempos; la edad de la sabiduría y también de la locura; la época de las creencias y de la incredulidad; la era de la luz y de las tinieblas; la primavera de la esperanza y el invierno de la desesperación. Todo lo poseíamos, pero nada teníamos; íbamos directamente al cielo y nos extraviábamos en el camino opuesto. En una palabra, aquella época era tan parecida a la actual, que nuestras más notables autoridades insisten en que, tanto en lo que se refiere al bien como al mal, sólo es aceptable la comparación en grado superlativo.”
  58. “That glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds.”
  59. “You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer,” said Miss Pross, in her breathing. “Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.”
  60. “Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world – the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.
    It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack.”
  61. “Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.”
  62. “The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance.”
  63. “I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.”
  64. “I am not old, but my young way was never the way to age.”
  65. “Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.”
  66. “In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease–a terrible passing inclination to die of it.”
  67. “I should like to ask you: — Does your childhood seem far off? Do the days when you sat at your mother’s knee, seem days of very long ago?” Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry answered: “Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way. My heart is touched now, by many remembrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!), and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were not confirmed with me.”
  68. “I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding.”
  69. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
  70. “That, they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they could never tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that, they could never endure the notion of their children laying their heads on their pillows; in short , that there never more could be , for them or theirs , any laying of heads upon pillows at all , unless the prisioner’s head was taken off.
  71. The Attorney General during the trial of Mr. Darnay ”
  72. “Do you particularly like the man?” he muttered, at his own image; “why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow”
  73. “You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles Darnay”
  74. “The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again, and the sun was red on the courtyard. But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with red upon it that the sun had never give, and would never take away.”
  75. “I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man’s opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures; or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music.”
  76. “I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making explanation for itself and wearing it out. ”
  77. “We’ll start to forget a place once we left it”
  78. “Tell the Wind and the Fire where to stop; not me.”
  79. “I am a disappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me”
  80. “When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained -not shown- yet always ready.”
  81. “Other sound than the owl’s voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  82. “…The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees—BLOOD.”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  83. “Good never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning.”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  84. “The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together and to rest in her bosom.”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  85. “It is a long time,’ repeated his wife; ‘and when is it not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.’
    ‘It does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning,’ said Defarge.
    ‘How long,’ demanded madame, composedly, ‘does it take to make and store the lightning? Tell me?”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  86. “The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death’s dominion. But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden of the night, straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays. And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light appeared to span the air between him and the sun, while the river sparkled under it.”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  87. “When you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  88. “A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  89. “It was the best of times,
    it was the worst of times,
    it was the age of wisdom,
    it was the age of foolishness,
    it was the epoch of belief,
    it was the epoch of incredulity,
    it was the season of Light,
    it was the season of Darkness,
    it was the spring of hope,
    it was the winter of despair,”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  90. “Will you never understand that I am incorrigible?”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  91. “Why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that.”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  92. “I distress you; I draw fast to an end.”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  93. “his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson’s Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
  94. “I hardly seem yet,” returned Charles Darnay, “to belong to this world again.”
    “I don’t wonder at it; it’s not so long since you were pretty far advanced on your way to another.”
    ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 

These quotes give a glimpse into the novel’s depth, exploring themes of love, sacrifice, revolution, and the duality of human nature. Dickens’ prose captures the turbulence of the era and the complexities of the human heart in a way that remains powerful and poignant even today.

 

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