Charles Dickens Quotes on Life (44 Quotes)

Sudden shifts and changes are no bad preparation for political life.

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.

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.

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.

Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself.

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.

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.

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

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.

Life is made of so many partings welded together

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.

There is a dread disease which so prepares its victim, as it were, for death . . . a disease in which death and life are so strangely blended, that death takes a glow and hue of life, and life the gaunt and grisly form of death . . .

Life is given to us on the definite understanding that we boldly defend it to the last.

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.

He had a sense of his dignity, which was of the most exquisite nature. He could detect a design upon it when nobody else had any perception of the fact. His life was made an agony by the number of fine scalpels that he felt to be incessantly engaged in dissecting his dignity.

. . .I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle's elocution - not for old associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very up-hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way in which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever expressed himself about anything.

Upon the purple tree-tops far away, and on the green height near at hand up which the shades were slowly creeping, there was an equal hush. Between the real landscape and its shadow in the water, there was no division both were so untroubled and clear, and, while so fraught with solemn mystery of life and death, so hopefully reassuring to the gazer's soothed heart, because so tenderly and mercifully beautiful.

Anythin for a quiet life, as the man said wen he took the sitivation at the lighthouse.

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

We forge the chains we wear in life.

All the housemaid hopes is, happiness for 'em - but marriage is a lottery, and the more she thinks about it, the more she feels the independence and the safety of a single life.

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

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

Lizzie 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 me 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 almost wish you had struck me dead along with it.

The jovial party broke up next morning. Breakings-up are capital things in our school-days, but in after life they are painful enough. Death, self-interest, and fortune's changes, are every day breaking up many a happy group, and scattering them far and wide and the boys and girls never come back again.

Wery good power o' suction, Sammy . . . You'd ha' made an uncommon fine oyster, Sammy, if you'd been born in that station o' life.

Take example by your father, my boy, and be wery careful o' vidders all your life, specially if they've kept a public house, Sammy.

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.

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.

Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.

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, Tom, are but shadows and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these

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 daystruck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns of flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle.

A brilliant morning shines on the old city. Its antiquities and ruins are surpassingly beautiful, with a lusty ivy gleaming in the sun, and the rich trees waving in the balmy air. Changes of glorious light from moving boughs, songs of birds, scents from gardens, woods, and fields - or, rather, from the one great garden of the whole cultivated island in its yielding time - penetrate into the Cathedral, subdue its earthy odour, and preach the Resurrection and the Life. The cold stone tombs of centuries ago grow warm and flecks of brightness dart into the sternest marble corners of the building, fluttering there like wings.

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. . .

Mr. Arthur Clennam took up his hat and buttoned his coat, and walked out. In the country, the rain would have developed a thousand fresh scents, and every drop would have had its bright association with some beautiful form of growth or life. In the city, it developed only foul stale smells, and was a sickly, lukewarm, dirt-stained, wretched addition to the gutters.

The beating of my heart was so violent and wild that I felt as if my life were breaking from me.

My life is one demd horrid grind.

On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip such is Life.

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

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.

From these cities they would go on again, by the roads of vines and olives, through squalid villages, where there was not a hovel without a gap in its filthy walls, not a window with a whole inch of glass or paper where there seemed to be nothing to support life, nothing to eat, nothing to make, nothing to grow, nothing to hope, nothing to do but die.

If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world's end without fear. I can give up nothing for you - I have nothing to resign, and no one to forsake but all my love and life shall be devoted to you, and with my last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense and memory left.

. . . trifles make the sum of life.