Charles Dickens Quotes (757 Quotes)

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!

I am not old, but my young way was never the way to age.

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

Anything to vary this detestable monotony.

Besides which, all that I could have said of the Story to any purpose, I had endeavoured to say in it.

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

He was nothing to me and I could have had no foresight then, that he ever would be anything to me, but it happened that I had this opportunity of observing him well.

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!

Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed and fed to draw round the bright fire, and thank God they were at home; and for the homeless starving wretch to lay him down and die. Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our bare streets at such times, who, let their crimes have been what they may, can hardly open them in a more bitter world.

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.

The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid for the turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again and chuckled till he cried.

I distress you; I draw fast to an end.

The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea.

Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.

Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence. Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone and bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and nothing else.

There can't be a quarrel without two parties, and I won't be one. I will be a friend to you in spite of you. So now you know what you've got to expect

Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?

Bless the bright eyes of your sex! They never see, whether for good or bad, more than one side of any question; and that is always, the one which first presents itself to them.

Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it's blowing up; and then they lengthens it out.

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 love your daughter fondly, dearly, disninterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her.

The cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.

He is the least suspicious of mankind; and whether that's a merit, or whether it's a blemish, it deserves consideration in all dealings with the Doctor, great or small.

They'll not blame me. They'll not object to me. They'll not mind what I do, if it's wrong. I'm only Mr. Dick.

Herbert received me with open arms, and I had never felt before so blessedly what it is to have a friend. When he had spoken some sound words of sympathy and encouragement, we sat down to consider the question, What was to be done?

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

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.

Have I yet to learn that the hardest and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any earthly record, and are suffered every day!

A multitude of people and yet solitude.

I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out...

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.

He didn't at all see why the busy bee should be proposed as a model to him; he supposed the Bee liked to make honey, or he wouldn't do it - nobody asked him. It was not necessary for the bee to make such a merit of his tastes.

I have often remarked- I suppose everybody has- that one's going away from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for a change in it.

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.

I am what you designed me to be.I am your blade. You cannot now complain if you also feel the hurt

One should never be ashamed to cry. Tears are rain on the dust of earth.

How slight a thing will disturb the equanimity of our frail minds!

On the eve of long voyages or an absence of many years, friends who are tenderly attached will seperate with the usual look, the usual pressure of the hand, planning one final interview for the morrow, while each well knows that it is but a poor feint to save the pain of uttering that one word, and the meeting will never be. Should possibilities be worse to bear than certainties?

All through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire- a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away.

In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease--a terrible passing inclination to die of it.

The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance.

I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight for me.

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

To have all those noble Romans alive before me, and walking in and out for my entertainment, instead of being the stern taskmasters they had been at school, was a most novel and delightful effect.

I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it to my bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and friend of my soul. I foresaw what was coming, and I felt that this time I really was gone.

Only twice more did the housekeeper reappear, and then her stay in the room was very short, and Mr. Jaggers was sharp with her. But her hands were Estella's hands, and her eyes were Estella's eyes...

I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil.

To this it must be added, that life in a wig is to a large class of people much more terrifying and impressive than life with its own head of hair …