Charles Dickens Quotes

881 Sourced Quotes

The expression of a man's face is commonly a help to his thoughts, or glossary on his speech; but the countenance of Newman Noggs, in his ordinary moods, was a problem which no stretch of ingenuity could solve.

Charles Dickens
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?

Charles Dickens
But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!

Charles Dickens
"It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals," said he, "to be looking into a churchyard on a wild windy night, and to feel that I no more hold a place among the living than these dead do, and even to know that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried here. Nothing uses me to it. A spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or lonelier, going unrecognized among mankind, than I feel."

Charles Dickens
O let us love our occupations,
Bless the squire and his relations,
Live upon our daily rations,
And always know our proper stations.

Charles Dickens
It is well for a man to respect his own vocation whatever it is and to think himself bound to uphold it and to claim for it the respect it deserves

Charles Dickens
Pale and pinched-up faces hovered about the windows where was tempting food; hungry eyes wandered over the profusion guarded by one thin sheet of brittle glass--an iron wall to them; half-naked shivering figures stopped to gaze at Chinese shawls and golden stuffs of India.

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

Charles Dickens
They don't mind it; it's a regular holiday to them—all porter and skittles.

Charles Dickens
Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving HOW NOT TO DO IT.

Charles Dickens
Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!

Charles Dickens
"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."

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

Charles Dickens
I'd lay down my life for her - Mas'r Davy - Oh! most content and cheerful! She's more to me - gent'lmen - than - she's all to me that ever I can want, and more than ever I - than ever I could say. I - I love her true. There ain't a gent'lman in all the land - nor yet sailing upon all the sea - that can love his lady more than I love her...

Charles Dickens
…a lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper —a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable.

Charles Dickens
It was a cold hard easterly morning when he latched the garden gate and turned away. The light snowfall which had feathered his schoolroom windows on the Thursday, still lingered in the air, and was falling white, while the wind blew black.

Charles Dickens
If I could have known Cicero, and been his friend, and talked with him in his retirement at Tusculum (beau-ti-ful Tusculum), I could have died contented.
Mrs Blimber

Charles Dickens
There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.

Charles Dickens
The meagre lighthouse all in white, haunting the seaboard, as if it were the ghost of an edifice that had once had colour and rotundity, dripped melancholy tears after its late buffeting by the waves.

Charles Dickens
Spite is a little word, but it represents as strange a jumble of feelings and compound of discords, as any polysyllable in the language.

Charles Dickens