Quotes by Charles Dickens
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Unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never learn to do their duty to us.

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.

Stranger, pause and ask thyself the question, Canst thou do likewise? If not, with a blush retire.

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.

He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever did, replied the girl, shaking her head. He is an earnest man when his hatred is up. I know many who do worse things; but I'd rather listen to them all a dozen times, than to that Monks once.

His face was stern, and much flushed. If he were really not in the habit of drinking rather more than was exactly good for him, he might have brought action against his countenance for libel, and have recovered heavy damages.

Company, you see -- company is -- is -- it's a very different thing from solitude -- an't it?

We know, Mr. Weller -- we, who are men of the world -- that a good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later.

Ecod, you may say what you like of my father, then, and so I give you leave, said Jonas. I think it's liquid aggravation that circulates through his veins, and not regular blood.

I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore -- yes, I do well.

It is well for a man to respect his own vocation whatever it is and to think himself bound to uphold it and to claim for it the respect it deserves.

Your voice and music are the same to me.

Mr Lorry asks the witness questions:
Ever been kicked?
Might have been.
Frequently? No. Ever kicked down stairs?
Decidedly not; once received a kick at the top of a staircase, and fell down stairs of his own accord.

I am well aware that I am the 'umblest person going... My mother is likewise a very 'umble person. We live in a 'umble abode.

He knew more of my intended career than I knew myself. I should be well enough educated for my destiny if I could hold my own with average young man in prosperous circumstances.

I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in consequence.

Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter's day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! It is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest things in life... are but shadows; and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these.

Apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition made me tremble. I am confident that it took no distinctness of shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror of childhood.

Long may it remain in this mixed world a question not easy of decision, which is the more beautiful evidence of the Almighty's goodness, the soft white hand formed for the ministrations of sympathy and tenderness, or the rough hard hand which the heart softens, teaches, and guides in a moment.

What am I doing? Tearing myself. My usual occupation at most times.

Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!

I recollected one story there was in the village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning.

Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth ... will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour.

When I went out, light of day seemed a darker color than when I went in.

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.

A demd, damp, moist, unpleasant body!

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.

I cannot help it; reason has nothing to do with it; I love her against reason-but who would as soon love me for my own sake, as she would love the beggar at the corner.

Rich folks may ride on camels, but it ain't so easy for 'em to see out of a needle's eye.

And I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States.

A man can well afford to be as bold as brass, my good fellow, when he gets gold in exchange!

Peggotty! repeated Miss Betsey, with some indignation. Do you mean to say, child, that any human being has gone into a Christian church, and got herself named Peggotty?

I made a compact with myself that in my person literature should stand by itself, of itself, and for itself.

Nothing is discovered without God's intention and assistance, and I suppose every new knowledge of His works that is conceded to man to be distinctly a revelation by which men are to guide themselves.

The meagre lighthouse all in white, haunting the seaboard, as if it were the ghost of an edifice that had once had colour and rotundity, dripped melancholy tears after its late buffeting by the waves.

The habit of paying compliments kept a man's tongue oiled without any expense.

Herbert said of himself, with his eyes fixed on the fire, that he thought he must have committed a felony and forgotten the details of it, he felt so dejected and guilty.

A man must take the fat with the lean.

It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.

And though the merriment was rather boisterous, still it came from the heart and not from the lips; and this is the right sort of merriment, after all.

There is no such passion in human nature, as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen.

Affery, like greater people, had always been right in her facts, and always wrong in the theories she deduced from them.

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.

Annual income is £ 20, the cost is 19, you will feel happiness. If annual income of £ 20, the cost is £ 20.6, you will see suffering.

There is something good in all weathers. If it doesn't happen to be good for my work today, it's good for some other man's today... and will come around for me tomorrow.

I was a blacksmith's boy but yesterday; I am -- what shall I say I am today?

I am what you designed me to be. I am your blade. You cannot now complain if you also feel the hurt.

Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it's blowing up; and then they lengthens it out.

Let me see you ride a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you have a head upon your shoulders, I'll knock your bonnet off, and tread upon it!

A brisk, bright, blue-eyed fellow, a very neat figure and rather under the middle size, never out of the way and never in it.

Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.

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.

I have broken where I should have bent; and have mused and brooded, when my spirit should have mixed with all God's great creation. The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother. I have turned from the world, and I pay the penalty.

It was darkly rumoured that the butler, regarding him with favour such as that stern man had never shown before to mortal boy, had sometimes mingled porter with his table beer to make him strong.

He describes it as a large apartment, with a red brick floor and a capacious chimney; the ceiling garnished with hams, sides of bacon, and ropes of onions.

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.

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!

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.

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!

I believe that virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen,... even if Gargery and Boffin did not speak like gentlemen, they were gentlemen.

I wish I were the Commander in Chief in India... I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested.

So does a whole world, with all of its greatness and littleness, lie in a twinkling star.

One should never be ashamed to cry. Tears are rain on the dust of earth.

Black are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead.

He cross-examined his very wine when he had nothing else at hand.

Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. That is the only good that has ever come of it.

The air came laden with the fragrance it caught upon its way, and the bees, upborne upon its scented breath, hummed forth their drowsy satisfaction as they floated by.

Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have got a little, it is often easy to get more.

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.

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

Train up a fig tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.

In fine weather the old gentelman is almost constantly in the garden; and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out the window at it, by the hour together. He has always something to do there, and you will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and planting, with manifest delight.

The sun does not shine upon this fair earth to meet frowning eyes, depend upon it.

In particular, there was a butler in a blue coat and bright buttons, who gave quite a winey flavour to the table beer; he poured it out so superbly.

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!

There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands.

It is the most miserable thing to feel ashamed at home.

Yet he would smoke his pipe at the Battery with a far more sagacious air then anywhere else -- even with a learned air -- as if he considered himself to be advancing immensely. Dear fellow, I hope he did.

The contention came, after all, to this -- 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.

On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip -- such is Life!

Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better.

Would it be weakness to return my love?

Here my sister, after a fit of clappings and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her knees, and threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down -- which were the last stages on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a perfect fury and a complete success, she made a dash to the door.

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.

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.

So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

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.

Opening her eyes again, and seeing her husband's face across the table, she leaned forward to give it a pat on the cheek, and sat down to supper, declaring it to be the best face in the world.