Quotes by Charles Dickens (Page 2 of 4)

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.

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.

I ain't took so many year to make a gentleman, not without knowing what's due to him.

Skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape.

My guiding star always is, Get hold of portable property.

He had a certain air of being a handsome man-which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man-which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.

Do not close your heart against all my efforts to help you.

When he saw her sitting there all alone, so young, and good, and beautiful, and kind to him; and heard her thrilling voice, so natural and sweet, and such a golden link between him and all his life's love and happiness, rising out of the silence; he turned his face away, and hid his tears.

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.

Circumstances may accumulate so strongly even against an innocent man, that directed, sharpened, and pointed, they may slay him.

Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great beams of wood. In short, the yet unfinished and unopened Railroad was in progress.

You have no idea what it is to have anybody wonderful fond of you, unless you have been got down and rolled upon by the lonely feelings that I have mentioned as having once got the better of me.

Possibly we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the morning, and took off our coats to the work.

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.

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.

Ride on! Ride on over all obstacles and win the race.

(On finding love later in life)
Let's be a comfortable couple, and take care of each other! And if we should get deaf, or lame, or blind, or bed-ridden, how glad we shall be that we have somebody we are fond of, always to talk to and sit with! Let's be a comfortable couple. Now do, my dear!

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.

I wear the chain I forged in life....I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.

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.

New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.

As to sleep, you know, I never sleep now. I might be a Watchman, except that I don't get any pay, and he's got nothing on his mind.

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day, or Warren's blackin' or Rowland's oil, or some o' them low fellows; never you let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy.

It was but imagination, yet imagination had all the terrors of reality; nay, it was worse, for the reality would have come and gone, and there an end, but in imagination it was always coming, and never went away.

The carpenter's daughter has won a name for herself, and deserved to win it.

I don't like that sort of school... where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged... where I have never seen among the pupils, whether boys or girls, anything but little parrots and small calculating machines.

It's an old habit of mine, Wal'r, said the Captain, any time these fifty year. When you see Ned Cuttle bite his nails, Wal'r, then you may know that Ned Cuttle's aground.

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.

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.

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!

I fear your kind and open communication, which has rendered me more painfully conscious of my own defects, has not improved me, sighed Kate.

I always loved that boy as if he'd been my -- my -- my own grandfather.

Oliver Twist has asked for more!

There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in connection with manner.

I am in the theatrical profession myself, my wife is in the theatrical profession, my children are in the theatrical profession.I had a dog that lived and died in it from a puppy; and my chaise-pony goes on, in Timour the Tartar.

The wine-shops breed, in physical atmosphere of malaria and a moral pestilence of envy and vengeance, the men of crime and revolution.

What a troublesome world this is, when one has the most right to expect it to be as agreeable as possible.

Prowling about the rooms, sitting down, getting up, stirring the fire, looking out the window, teasing my hair, sitting down to write, writing nothing, writing something and tearing it up.

Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away.

She's a very charming and delightful creature, quoth Mr. Robert Sawyer, in reply; and has only one fault that I know of, Ben. It happens, unfortunately, that that single blemish is a want of taste. She don't like me.

Indeed this gentleman's stoicism was of that not uncommon kind, which enables a man to bear with exemplary fortitude the afflictions of his friends, but renders him, by way of counterpoise, rather selfish and sensitive in respect of any that happen to befall himself.

We all have some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time -- of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances.

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.

Battledore and shuttlecock's a wery good game, vhen you an't the shuttlecock and two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too exciting to be pleasant.

When the wind is blowing and the sleet or rain is driving against the dark windows, I love to sit by the fire, thinking of what I have read in books of voyage and travel.

Nothing ever 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.

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.

I will live in the past, the present, and the future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me.

All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon their trackless flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity's small change in general society.

How slight a thing will disturb the equanimity of our frail minds!

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.

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.

The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.

Remember, to the last, that while there is life there is hope.

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.

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.

Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine.

If ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. 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 the true metal and bear the stamp of heaven.

Ah, if only I had brought a cigar with me! This would have established my identity.

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.

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

To bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted delights; and there is no playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game, without growing the worse for it.

Although a man may lose a sense of his own importance when he is a mere unit among a busy throng, all utterly regardless of him, it by no means follows that he can dispossess himself, with equal facility, of a very strong sense of the importance and magnitude of his cares.

He was simply and staunchly true to his duty alike in the large case and in the small. So all true souls ever are. So every true soul ever was, ever is, and ever will be. There is nothing little to the really great in spirit.

Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in emptying one's glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on one's nose.

If they would rather die, ... they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they always say in Turkey, when they cut the wrong man's head off.

There lives at least one being who can never change-one being who would be content to devote his whole existence to your happiness-who lives but in your eyes-who breathes but in your smiles-who bears the heavy burden of life itself only for you.

His shoes looked too large; his sleeve looked too long; his hair looked too limp; his features looked too mean; his exposed throat looked as if a halter would have done it good.

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.

Over the whole, a young lady presided, whose gloomy haughtiness as she surveyed the street, announced a deep-seated grievance against society, and an implacable determination to be avenged.

Troubles are exceedingly gregarious in their nature, and flying in flocks are apt to perch capriciously.

Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered at, and not very blamable; but, he had made a lamentation and uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always contagion in weakness and selfishness.

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. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the ivy green.

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.

The sergeant was describing a military life. It was all drinking, he said, except that there were frequent intervals of eating and love making.

Friendless I can never be, for all mankind are my kindred, and I am on ill terms with no one member of my great family.

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

Gold, for the instant, lost its luster in his eyes, for there were countless treasures of the heart which it could never purchase.

From the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen latitudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one way Charles Darnay's way the way of the love of a woman.

that the mounds of ices, and the bowls of mint-julep and sherry cobbler they make in these latitudes, are refreshments never to be thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who would preserve contented minds.