Charles Dickens Quotes (757 Quotes)

Yes I have a pair of eyes,' replied Sam, 'and that's just it. If they was a pair o' patent double million magnifyin' gas microscopes of hextra power, p'raps I might be able to see through a flight o' stairs and a deal door. . .

He had a certain air of being a handsome man--which he was not and a certain air of being a well-bred man--which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.

The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.

I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up every line as he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I fully believed) like a snail.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

I never will desert Mr. Micawber.

I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday - the longer, the better - from the great boarding school where we are forever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and giv

Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered at, and not very blamable but, he had made a lamentation and uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always contagion in weakness and selfishness.

In the majority of cases, conscience is an elastic and very flexible article.

You don't object to an aged parent, I hope.

Kent, sir -- everybody knows Kent -- apples, cherries, hops, and women.

So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I began to contract a quantity of debt.

It was as true, said Mr. Barkis, ... as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them.

Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.

Known by the sobriquet of 'The artful Dodger'.

He wore a sprinkling of powder upon his head, as if to make himself look benevolent but if that were his purpose, he would perhaps have done better to powder his countenance also, for there was something in its very wrinkles, and in his cold restless eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would announce itself in spite of him.

The object of our lives is won. Henceforth let us wear it silently. My lips are closed upon the past from this hour. I forgive you your part in to-morrow's wickedness. May God forgive my own

Now, Bella suspected by this time that Mr. Rokesmith admired her. Whether the knowledge (for it was rather that than suspicion) caused her to incline to him a little more, or a little less, than she had done at first whether it rendered her eager to find out more about him, because she sought to establish reason for her distrust, or because she sought to free him from it was as yet dark to her own heart. But at most times he occupied a great amount of her attention . . .

Hed be sharper than a serpents tooth, if he wasnt as dull as ditch water. Fanny Cleaver.

Did it ever strike you on such a morning as this that drowning would be happiness and peace.

She is come at last - at last - and all is gas and gaiters.

They are so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a water-closet doormat.

The first diabolical character who intruded himself on my peaceful youth (as I called to mind that day at Dullborough), was a certain Captain Murderer. This wretch must have been an off-shoot of the Blue Beard family, but I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in those times. His warning name would seem to have awakened no general prejudice against him, for he was admitted into the best society and possessed immense wealth. Captain Murderer's mission was matrimony, and the gratification of a cannibal appetite with tender brides.

I took a good deal o pains with his eddication, sir let him run in the streets when he was very young, and shift for hisself. Its the only way to make a boy sharp, sir.

With affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.

I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand, gave her no right to bring me up by jerks.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth . . . will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour.

Oh gracious, why wasn't I born old and ugly.

Lawyers hold that there are two kinds of particularly bad witnesses--a reluctant witness, and a too-willing witness.

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be.

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.

All of us have wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.

In keeping the world of Charles Dickens alive, ... what I do on the stage is one thing. It's afterward that's the most special. I love to talk about Charles Dickens and hear about people's questions, or their memories of a special time or a family tradition of listening to 'A Christmas Carol.'

Buy an annuity cheap, and make your life interesting to yourself and everybody else that watches the speculation.

Skewered through and through with office pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape.

On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels . . .

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

Friendless I can never be, for all mankind are my kindred, and I am on ill terms with no one member of my great family.

Love is in all things a most wonderful teacher . . .

There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.

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

For who can wonder that man should feel a vague belief in tales of disembodied spirits wandering through those places which they once dearly affected, when he himself, scarcely less separated from his old world than they, is for ever lingering upon past emotions and bygone times, and hovering, the ghost of his former self, about the places and people that warmed his heart of old

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

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.

Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great arm-chair by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new.

Do all the good you can, and make as little fuss about it as possible.

It being a part of Mrs. Pipchin's system not to encourage a child's mind to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by force like an oyster . . .

'Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.