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Charles Dickens -
David Copperfield (1850)
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Both Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa had a superstition, however, that he would have declared his passion, if he had not been cut short in his youth (at about sixty) by over-drinking his constitution, and over-doing an attempt to set it right again by swilling Bath water.
Charles Dickens
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New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.
Charles Dickens
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I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything
Charles Dickens
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May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?
Charles Dickens
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It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I stopped my most unwilling hand. Nothing can undo it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was.
Charles Dickens
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There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands.
Charles Dickens
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I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.
Charles Dickens
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The cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.
Charles Dickens
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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.
Charles Dickens
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It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.
Charles Dickens
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May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us? That we may forgive it.
Charles Dickens
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In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.
Charles Dickens
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"In case anything turned up," which was his [Mr. Micawber's] favorite expression.
Charles Dickens
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Mr. Dick had been for upwards of ten years endeavouring to keep King Charles the First out of the Memorial; but he had been constantly getting into it, and was there now.
Charles Dickens
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You'll find us rough, sir, but you'll find us ready.
Charles Dickens
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I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.
Charles Dickens
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Let sleeping dogs lie—who wants to rouse 'em?
Charles Dickens
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One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind.
Charles Dickens
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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.
Charles Dickens
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"I take my leave of you, Mr. Creakle, and all of you," said Mr. Mell, glancing round the room, and again patting me gently on the shoulders. "James Steerforth, the best wish I can leave you is that you may come to be ashamed of what you have done today. At present I would prefer to see you anything rather than a friend, to me, or to anyone in whom I feel an interest."
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"Madam," replied Mr. Micawber, "it is my intention to register such a vow on the virgin page of the future."
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I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!
Charles Dickens
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After tea, we discussed a variety of topics before the fire; and Mrs. Micawber was good enough to sing us (in a small, thin, flat voice, which I remembered to have considered, when I first knew her, the very table-beer of acoustics) the favourite ballads of "The Dashing White Sergeant", and "Little Tafflin".
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"As I think I told you once before," said I, "it is you who have been, in your greed and cunning, against all the world. It may be profitable to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death."
Charles Dickens
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"The twins no longer derive their sustenance from Nature's founts - in short," said Mr. Micawber, in one of his bursts of confidence, "they are weaned..."
Charles Dickens
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Rattle me out of bed early, set me going, give me as short a time as you like to bolt my meals in, and keep me at it. Keep me always at it, and I'll keep you always at it, you keep somebody else always at it. There you are with the Whole Duty of Man in a commercial country.
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But the words she spoke of Mrs Harris, lambs could not forgive... nor worms forget.
Charles Dickens
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Miss Mills replied, on general principles, that the Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was.
Charles Dickens
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"O, Mrs. Clennam, Mrs. Clennam," said Little Dorrit, "angry feelings and unforgiving deeds are no comfort and no guide to you and me."
Charles Dickens
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Now I am in the garden at the back... a very preserve of butterflies as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate... where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket while I stand by, bolting furtive gooseberries, and trying to look unnerved.
Charles Dickens
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Quote of the day
Men were only made into "men" with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally "a man" any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.
Wyndham Lewis
Charles Dickens
Creative Commons
Born:
February 7, 1812
Died:
June 9, 1870
(aged 58)
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