Charles Dickens Quotes on Sadness (18 Quotes)




    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.

    I have seen enough, too, to know that it is not always the youngest and best who are spared to those that love them; but this should give us comfort rather than sorrow, for Heaven is just, and such things teach us impressively that there is a far brighter world than this, and that the passage to it is speedy.

    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.


    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.

    He saw that men who worked hard, and earned their scanty bread with lives of labour, were cheerful and happy and that to the most ignorant, the sweet face of Nature was a never-failing source of cheerfulness and joy. He saw those who had been delicately nurtured, and tenderly brought up, cheerful under privations, and superior to suffering, that would have crushed many of a rougher grain, because they bore within their own bosoms the materials of happiness, contentment, and peace. He saw that women, the tenderest and most fragile of all God's creatures, were the oftenest superior to sorrow, adversity, and distress and he saw that it was because they bore, in their own hearts, an inexhaustible well-spring of affection and devotion. Above all, he saw that men like himself, who snarled at the mirth and cheerfulness of others, were the foulest weeds on the fair surface of the earth and setting all the good of the world against the evil, he came to the conclusion that it was a very decent and respectable sort of world after all.

    Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

    And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world

    Oh, what a misfortune is mine, cried Bradley, breaking off to wipe the starting perspiration from his face as he shook from head to foot, that I cannot so control myself as to appear a stronger creature than this, when a man who has not felt in all his life what I have felt in a day can so command himself He said it in a very agony, and even followed it with an errant motion of his hands as if he could have torn himself.

    Our affections are our consolation and comfort and memory, however sad, is the best and purest link between this world and a better

    Annual income twenty pound, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pound, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

    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-humor

    Things that never die The pure, the bright, the beautiful That stirred our hearts in youth, The impulses to wordless prayer, The streams of love and truth, The longing after something lost, The spirits yearning cry, The striving after better hopes These things can never die. The timid hand stretched forth to aid A brother in his need A kindly word in griefs dark hour That proves a friend indeed The plea for mercy softly breathed, When justice threatens high, The sorrow of a contrite heart These things shall never die. Let nothing pass, for every hand Must find some work to do, Lose not a chance to waken love Be firm and just and true. So shall a light that cannot fade Beam on thee from on high, And angel voices say to thee 'These things shall never die.'

    It matters little, she said, softly. To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.

    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.

    A moment, and its glory was no more. The sun went down beneath the long dark lines of hill and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement the light was all withdrawn the shining church turned cold and dark the stream forgot to smile the birds were silent and the gloom of winter dwelt on everything.

    But the moon came slowly up in all her gentle glory, and the stars looked out, and through the small compass of the grated window, as through the narrow crevice of one good deed in a murky life of guilt, the face of Heaven shone bright and merciful. He raised his head gazed upward at the quiet sky, which seemed to smile upon the earth in sadness, as if the night, more thoughtful than the day, looked down in sorrow on the sufferings and evil deeds of men and felt its peace sink deep into his heart.


    More Charles Dickens Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Man - Life - World - Time - Mind - Night - Nature - People - Christianity - Light - Sadness - Friendship - Woman - Youth - Love - Place - Christmas - Wisdom & Knowledge - Sense & Perception - View All Charles Dickens Quotations

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