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

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

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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
"In case anything turned up," which was his [Mr. Micawber's] favorite expression.

Charles Dickens
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
You'll find us rough, sir, but you'll find us ready.

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
One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind.

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
"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
"Madam," replied Mr. Micawber, "it is my intention to register such a vow on the virgin page of the future."

Charles Dickens
I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!

Charles Dickens
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".

Charles Dickens
"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
"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
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.

Charles Dickens
But the words she spoke of Mrs Harris, lambs could not forgive... nor worms forget.

Charles Dickens
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
"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
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