Charles Dickens Quotes

881 Sourced Quotes

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

Charles Dickens
She means well, said Mr Jarndyce, hastily. The wind's in the east. It was in the north, sir, as we came down, observed Richard. My dear Rick, said Mr Jarndyce, poking the fire, I'll take an oath it's either in the east, or going to be. I am always conscious of an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in the east.

Charles Dickens
We went our several ways," said Lady Dedlock, "and had little in common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I suppose, but it could not be helped.

Charles Dickens
Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open.

Charles Dickens
It was a turkey! He could never have stood upon his legs, that bird! He would have snapped 'em off short in a minute, like sticks of sealing wax.

Charles Dickens
When men are about to commit, or sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable.

Charles Dickens
The unities, sir…are a completeness—a kind of universal dovetailedness with regard to place and time.
Mr Curdle

Charles Dickens
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
Let sleeping dogs lie—who wants to rouse 'em?

Charles Dickens
The have-his-carcase, next to the perpetual motion, is vun of the blessedest things as wos ever made.
Sam Weller

Charles Dickens
He's tough, ma'am,—tough is J. B.; tough and devilish sly.

Charles Dickens
The last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck.

Charles Dickens
Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter's day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! It is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest things in life... are but shadows; and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these.

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

Charles Dickens
There are strings…in the human heart that had better not be wibrated.
Mr Tappertit

Charles Dickens
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
To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

Charles Dickens
Oh, but he was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone. Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.

Charles Dickens
Mr. Augustus Minns was a bachelor, of about forty as he said — of about eight-and-forty as his friends said. He was always exceedingly clean, precise, and tidy: perhaps somewhat priggish, and the most retiring man in the world.

Charles Dickens