Charles Dickens Quotes (757 Quotes)

He was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset

Don't let your sober face elate you, however; you don't know what it may come to

Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again.

You touch some of the reasons for my going, not for my staying away.

Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite ... Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families ... and you have no idea ... what games goes on!

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.

And I wondered when I peeped into one or two on the lower tiers, and saw the tied-up brown paper packets inside, whether the flower-seeds and bulbs ever wanted of a fine day to break out of those jails, and bloom.

I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry--I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart--God knows what its name was--that tears started to my eyes.

There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.

People like us don't go out at night cause people like them see us for what we are

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.

Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.

Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see triumph.

Cincinnati is a beautiful city; cheerful, thriving, and animated. I have not often seen a place that commends itself so favourably and pleasantly to a stranger at the first glance as this does.

What connexion can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!

Mr. Dick, give me your hand, for your common sense is invaluable.

Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.

It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable, honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world, but it is very possible to know how it has touched one's self in going by.

There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.

Please, sir, I want some more.

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

Good never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning.

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.

Cincinnati is honourably famous for its free schools, of which it has so many that no person's child among its population can, by possibility, want the means of education.

Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and without punctuation, but not much to tell.

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

Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy. -Miss Havisham

It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.

Uncle Pumblechook: a large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked, and had that moment come to.

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

Marley was dead, to begin with ... This must be distintly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.

He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart.

Other sound than the owl's voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.

The inhabitants of Cincinnati are proud of their city as one of the most interesting in America: and with good reason.

A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think, as I have observed it to be considered since. I have known it very fashionable indeed. I have seen it displayed with such success, that I have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars.

Oh, but reasoning is so much worse than scolding!... I didn't marry to be reasoned with. If you meant to reason with such a poor little thing as I am, you ought to have told me so, you cruel boy!

But, before I proceed to narrate it, and before I pass on to all the changes it involved, I must give one chapter to Estella. It is not much to give to the theme that so long filled my heart.

Its other name was Satis, which is Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or all three -- or all one to me -- for enough....but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house, could want nothing else.

We need never be ashamed of our tears.

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.

Marley was dead: to begin with.

I am a disappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me

REMEMBER HOW STRONG WE ARE IN OUR HAPPINESS, AND HOW WEAK HE IS IN IS MISERY!

A word in earnest is as good as a speech.

As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty in our way, little Em'ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger.

Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.

But, in this separation I associate you only with the good and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you have done far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may.

Joe's blue eyes turned a little watery; he rubbed first one of them, and then the other, in a most uncongenial and uncomfortable manner, with the round knob on the top of the poker.

We were equals afterwards, as we had been before; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking about him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart.

The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery having been unexpected, and attempted in the night-time; as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact business at noon, and to make an appointment, by the twopenny post, a day or two previous.