Quotes by Charles Dickens (Page 4 of 4)

A very little key will open a very heavy door.

Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; -- the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!

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 a young heart everything is fun.

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!

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.

Our love had begun in folly, and ended in madness!

What a fine thing capital punishment is! Dead men never repent; dead men never bring awkward stories to light. The prospect of the gallows, too, makes them hardy and bold. Ah, it's a fine thing for the trade! Five of them strung up in a row, and none left to play booty or turn white-livered!

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 stationary.

A man would die tonight of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then 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 pitty in all the glittering multitude.

There are many things which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited.

It's Christmas Day! said Scrooge to himself. I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can.

My impression is, after many years of consideration, that there never can have been anybody in the world who played worse.

Job Trotter bowed low; and in spite of Mr. Weller's previous remonstrance, the tears again rose to his eyes. 'I never see such a feller,' said Sam. 'Blessed if I don't think he's got a main in his head as is always turned on.

It's a weakness to be so affectionate, but I can't help it. No doubt my health would be much better if it was otherwise, still I wouldn't change my disposition if I could. It's the cause of much suffering, but it's a consolation to know I possess it, when I wake up in the night.

He takes out his anger by having his carriage speed through the streets, scattering the commoners in the way.

It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am. I shall sink lower, and be worse.

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.

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.

But everything in our intercourse did give me pain. Whatever her tone with me happened to be, I could put no trust in it, and build no hope on it; and yet I went on against trust and against hope. Why repeat it a thousand times? So it always was.

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.

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.

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.

Please, sir, I want some more.

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.

I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything.

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going.

We'll start to forget a place once we left it.

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.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

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.

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.

To have a cricket on the hearth is the luckiest thing in all the world!

The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something turn up.

Every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

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.

Keep out of Chancery. It's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains.

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!

Your Honour, unless your Honour, without a moment's loss of time, makes sail for the nearest shore, this is a doomed ship, and her name is the Coffin!

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.

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.

My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.

What an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world!

If the parks be the lungs of London we wonder what Greenwich Fair is -- a periodical breaking out, we suppose -- a sort of spring rash.

It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain.

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.

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.

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.

I have always thought of Christmas time... as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time.

There seems a magic in the very name of Christmas.

For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.

Spite is a little word, but it represents as strange a jumble of feelings and compound of discords, as any polysyllable in the language.

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.

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.

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!

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one.

She wasn't a logically reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in heaven as high as heads.

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces -- and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper -- love her, love her, love her!

Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.

United metropolitan improved hot muffin and crumpet baking and punctual delivery company.

This is a world of action, and not moping and droning in.

Remembrance, like a candle, burns brightest at Christmastime.

Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.

Lawyers are shy of meddling with the Law on their own account: knowing it to be an edged tool of uncertain application, very expensive in the working, and rather remarkable for its properties of close shaving than for its always shaving the right person.

What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? O yes!

For nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

It was a cold hard easterly morning when he latched the garden gate and turned away. The light snowfall which had feathered his schoolroom windows on the Thursday, still lingered in the air, and was falling white, while the wind blew black.

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.

We umble ones have got eyes, mostly speaking -- and we look out of 'em.

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast.

Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we'd give blood.

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.

And can it be that in a world so full and busy the loss of one creature makes a void so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up!

There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.

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.

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.

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that.

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.

When I had lain awake a little awhile, those extraordinary voices with which silence teems, began to make themselves audible. The closet whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little washing-stand ticked, and one guitar-string played occasionally in the chest of drawers.

I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.

That glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds.

My advice is, never do to-morrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!

Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.

Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.

She had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very good.

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some.

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

There is something in sickness that breaks down the pride of manhood.

I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.

The world belongs to those who set out to conquer it armed with self confidence and good humour.

There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.

Trifles make the sum of life.

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before -- more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.

We need never be ashamed of our tears.

There is a wisdom of the head, and… there is a wisdom of the heart.

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.

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.

A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.

Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.

Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.

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.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favor of two.

There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.

A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match.

It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

You don't carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.

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.

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.

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.

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

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

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many -- not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

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.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.

He would make a lovely corpse.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows -- and china.