Charles Dickens Quotes (757 Quotes)

'Wal'r, my boy,' replied the Captain, in the Proverbs of Solomon you will find the following words, 'May we never want a friend in need, nor a bottle to give him' When found, make a note of.'

Here's the rule, for bargains 'Do other men, for they would do you.' That's the true business precept.

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

There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.

He has gone to the demnition bow-wows.

The night was dark, and a cold wind blew, driving the clouds, furiously and fast, before it. There was one black, gloomy mass that seemed to follow him not hurrying in the wild chase with the others, but lingering sullenly behind, and gliding darkly and stealthily on. He often looked back at this, and, more than once, stopped to let it pass over but, somehow, when he went forward again, it was still behind him, coming mournfully and slowly up, like a shadowy funeral train.

Yes. He saw her in his mind, exactly as she was. She bore him company with her pride, resentment, hatred, all as plain to him as her beauty with nothing plainer to him than her hatred of him. He saw her sometimes haughty and repellent at his side, and some times down among his horse's feet, fallen and in the dust. But he always saw her as she was, without disguise, and watched her on the dangerous way that she was going.

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.

Wich is your partickler wanity Wich wanity do you like the flavour on best, sir.

I am always conscious of an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in the east.

At last, however, he began to think -- as you or I would have thought at first for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too . . .

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.

'Old girl,' said Mr Bagnet, give him my opinion. You know it.'

O Mrs Higden, Mrs Higden, you was a woman and a mother, and a mangler in a million million.

Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick-and-span new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new, all their servants were new. . .

There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver.

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.

The man who now confronted Gashford, was a squat, thickset personage, with a low, retreating forehead, a coarse shock head of hair, and eyes so small and near together, that his broken nose alone seemed to prevent their meeting and fusing into one of the usual size.

The business of the law is to increase the business of the law

I admire machinery as much is any man, and am as thankful to it as any man can be for what it does for us. But it will never be a substitute for the face of a man, with his soul in it, encouraging another man to be brave and true.

Uriah, with his long hands slowly twining over one another, made a ghastly writhe from the waist upwards.

Dumb as a drum vith a hole in it, sir.

The wictim o' connubiality, as Blue Beard's domestic chaplain said, with a tear of pity, ven he buried him.

I am a lone lorn creetur and everythink goes contrairy with me.

Strong mental agitation and disturbance was no novelty to him, even before his late sufferings. It never is, to obstinate and sullen natures for they struggle hard to be such.

No man knows till the time comes, what depths are within him. To some men it never comes let them rest and be thankful To me, you brought it on me, you forced it and the bottom of this raging sea, striking himself upon the breast, has been heaved up ever since.

The young woman who brought me acquainted with Captain Murderer had a fiendish enjoyment of my terrors, and used to begin, I remember - as a sort of introductory overture - by clawing the air with both hands, and uttering a long low hollow groan. So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in combination with this infernal Captain, that I sometimes used to plead I thought I was hardly strong enough and old enough to hear the story again just yet.

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.

She knows wots wot, she does.

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

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

Our backs is easy ris. We must be cracked-up, or they rises, and we snarls. We shows our teeth, I tell you, fierce. You'd better crack us up, you had.

. . . she stood for some moments gazing at the sisters, with affection beaming in one eye, and calculation out of the other.

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.

They whirled past the dark trees, as feathers would be swept before a hurricane. Houses, gates, churches, hay-stacks, objects of every kind they shot by, with a velocity and noise like roaring waters suddenly let loose. Still the noise of pursuit grew louder, and still my uncle could hear the young lady wildly screaming, Faster Faster

Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.

A lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper -- a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable.

'God bless us every one' said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

In that giddy whirl of noise and confusion, the men were delirious. Who thought of money, ruin, or the morrow, in the savage intoxication of the moment

It was not a bosom to repose upon, but it was a capital bosom to hang jewels upon.

When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings.

Miss Bolo rose from the table considerably agitated, and went straight home, in a flood of tears and a Sedan chair.

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.

It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither.

. . . Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming there.

I only ask for information.

Ride on Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race.

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.

But what was a girl to Dombey and Son In the capital of the House's name and dignity, such a child was merely a piece of base coin that couldn't be invested--a bad Boy--nothing more.

Why, I don't exactly know about perjury, my dear sir, replied the little gentleman. Harsh word, my dear sir, very harsh word indeed. It's a legal fiction, my dear sir, nothing more.