Charles Dickens Quotes

881 Sourced Quotes

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
Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.

Charles Dickens
Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and without punctuation, but not much to tell.

Charles Dickens
I loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I loved you madly.

Charles Dickens
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
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
Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.

Charles Dickens
Marley's Ghost speaking:
I wear the chain I forged in life.

Charles Dickens
She dotes on poetry, sir. She adores it; I may say that her whole soul and mind are wound up, and entwined with it. She has produced some delightful pieces, herself, sir. You may have met with her 'Ode to an Expiring Frog,' sir.

Charles Dickens
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
It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.

Charles Dickens
People now call him the Golden Dustman [Mr. Boffin].

Charles Dickens
There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.
Miss La Creevy

Charles Dickens
Anythin' for a quiet life, as the man said wen he took the sitivation at the lighthouse.
Sam Weller

Charles Dickens
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
"She's the sort of woman now," said Mould... "one would almost feel disposed to bury for nothing: and do it neatly, too!"

Charles Dickens
As she frequently remarked when she made any such mistake, it would be all the same a hundred years hence.
Mrs Squeers

Charles Dickens
I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.

Charles Dickens
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
Prowling about the rooms, sitting down, getting up, stirring the fire, looking out the window, teasing my hair, sitting down to write, writing nothing, writing something and tearing it up...

Charles Dickens
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
Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away.

Charles Dickens
…vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

Charles Dickens
My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in The People governed is, on the whole, illimitable.

Charles Dickens
Judiciously show a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one day.

Charles Dickens
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
Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on Boxin' Day.

Charles Dickens
Oh, Mrs Corney, what a prospect this opens! What a opportunity for a jining of hearts and house-keepings!

Charles Dickens
Chadband:
Why can we not fly, my friends?
[Mr Snagsby:]No wings.

Charles Dickens
Leave the bottle on the chimleypiece, and don't ask me to take none, but let me put my lips to it when I am so dispoged.

Charles Dickens