Charles Dickens - David Copperfield (1850)

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The mistake was made of putting some of the trouble out of King Charles's head into my head.
Mr Dick

Charles Dickens
The partner of his joys and sorrows – I again allude to his wife.

Charles Dickens
Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman.

Charles Dickens
You are too young to know how the world changes everyday,' said Mrs Creakle, 'and how the people in it pass away. But we all have to learn it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when we are old, some of us at all times in our lives.

Charles Dickens
It was as true…as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them.
Mr Barkis

Charles Dickens
Experientia does it — as Papa used to say.

Charles Dickens
We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!

Charles Dickens
A most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places and not quite so loose in others.

Charles Dickens
Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It's so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.

Charles Dickens
A long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull all together.

Charles Dickens
I am a lone lorn creetur … and everythink goes contrairy with me.
Mrs Gummidge

Charles Dickens
Most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.

Charles Dickens
A commission of haberdashers could alone have reported what the rest of her poor dress was made of, but it had a strong general resemblance to seaweed, with here and there a gigantic tea-leaf. Her shawl looked particularly like a tea-leaf after long infusion.

Charles Dickens
I have nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess that no one can ever believe this narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the writing.

Charles Dickens
It is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished...

Charles Dickens
Mrs Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn't room to swing a cat there; but, as Mr Dick justly observed to me, sitting down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, 'You know, Trotwood, I don't want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to me!'

Charles Dickens
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

Charles Dickens
I find my breath gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as it comes, and make the most of it. That's the best way, ain't it?

Charles Dickens
He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart.

Charles Dickens
And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that [Christmas] has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

Charles Dickens
I have known him come home to supper with a flood of tears, and a declaration that nothing was now left but a jail; and go to bed making a calculation of the expense of putting bow-windows to the house, 'in case anything turned up,' which was his favourite expression.
Of Mr Micawber

Charles Dickens
All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money!

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