Charles Dickens - Great Expectations (1861)

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Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy. -Miss Havisham

Charles Dickens
Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

Charles Dickens
But tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble's soul; his heart was waterproof. Like washable beaver hats that improve with rain, his nerves were rendered stouter and more vigorous, by showers of tears, which, being tokens of weakness, and so far tacit admissions of his own power, pleased and exalted him.

Charles Dickens
'suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.'

Charles Dickens
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

Charles Dickens
Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.

Charles Dickens
And still I stood looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, but always miserable.

Charles Dickens
And this is the eternal law. For, Evil often stops short at istelf and dies with the doer of it! but Good, never.

Charles Dickens
Mrs Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her clenliness more umcomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

Charles Dickens
Her bringing me up by hand, gave her no right to bring me up by jerks.

Charles Dickens
Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over? Because, if it is to spite her, I should think - but you know best - that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think - but you know best - she was not worth gaining over.

Charles Dickens
I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt, and, of course, if it ceased to beat, I would cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense.

Charles Dickens
'He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy,' said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out.

Charles Dickens
I'll tell you," said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, "what real love it. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter - as I did!

Charles Dickens
I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuadinig arguments of my best friends.

Charles Dickens
He wishes me most particular to write what larks. He says you will understand.
Message from Joe Gargery to Pip

Charles Dickens
The sun,—the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man—burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.

Charles Dickens
We were equals afterwards, as we had been before; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking about him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart.

Charles Dickens
In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter.

Charles Dickens
If you can't get to be uncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked. [...] live well and die happy.

Charles Dickens
Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than the dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by religion.

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

Charles Dickens
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

Charles Dickens
Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures, hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?

Charles Dickens
All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew.

Charles Dickens
Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.

Charles Dickens
I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.

Charles Dickens
My guiding star always is, Get hold of portable property.

Charles Dickens
That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different it's course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for the moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Charles Dickens