Charles Dickens Quotes

881 Sourced Quotes

A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!

Charles Dickens
You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer, said Miss Pross, in her breathing. Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.

Charles Dickens
If ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of the true metal and bear the stamp of heaven.

Charles Dickens
Pittsburgh is like Birmingham in England; at least its townspeople say so.… It certainly has a great quantity of black smoke hanging about it.

Charles Dickens
Something will come of this. I hope it mayn't be human gore.
Simon Tappertit

Charles Dickens
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.

Charles Dickens
Minerva House … was "a finishing establishment for young ladies," where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.

Charles Dickens
Around and around the house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow.

Charles Dickens
Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.

Charles Dickens
Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together...

Charles Dickens
A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside; and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact, in one of the spice islands of the Indian Ocean.

Charles Dickens
Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.

Charles Dickens
You have been so careful of me that I never had a child's heart. You have trained me so well that I never dreamed a child's dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, Father, from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child's belief or a child's fear. Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this testimony to it. " My dear Louisa," said he, you abundantly repay my care. Kiss me, my dear girl.

Charles Dickens
The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the the land,
In England there shall be dear bread—in Ireland, sword and brand;
And poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand,
So, rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand,
Of the fine old English Tory days;
Hail to the coming time!

Charles Dickens
And it was not until I began to think, that I began fully to know how wrecked I was, and how the ship in which I had sailed was gone to pieces.

Charles Dickens
It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

Charles Dickens
I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!

Charles Dickens
How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, oh, Father, What have you done with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here? Said louisa as she touched her heart.

Charles Dickens
A good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later.
The Gentleman in Blue

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

Charles Dickens
I know that she deserves the best and purest love the heart of man can offer," said Mrs. Maylie; "I know that the devotion and affection of her nature require no ordinary return, but one that shall be deep and lasting.

Charles Dickens
Compeyson's business was the swindling, hand writing forging, stolen bank-note passing, and such-like. All sorts of traps as Compeyson could set with his head, and keep his own legs out of and get the profits from and let another man in for, was Compeyson's business. He'd no more heart than a iron file he was as cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil afore mentioned.

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

Charles Dickens
"Do not repine, my friends," said Mr. Pecksniff, tenderly. "Do not weep for me. It is chronic."

Charles Dickens
The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise, on a summer's morning, is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business, cause them to be well acquainted with the scene. There is an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely-shut buildings, which throughout the day are swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive.

Charles Dickens
Perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.

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

Charles Dickens
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.

Charles Dickens
A person who can't pay, gets another person who can't pay, to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs, to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking match.

Charles Dickens