Charles Dickens Quotes
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An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music.
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Polly put the kettle on, we'll all have tea.
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One disagreeable result of whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound - strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter snow.
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Château and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well-thousands of acres of land-a whole province of France-all France itself-lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hairbreadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star.
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Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.
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A blight had fallen on the trees and shrubs; and the wind, at length beginning to break the unnatural stillness that had prevailed all day, sighed heavily from time to time, as though foretelling in grief the ravages of the coming storm. The bat skimmed in fantastic flights through the heavy air, and the ground was alive with crawling things, whose instinct brought them forth to swell and fatten in the rain.
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"But even if he has been wicked," pursued Rose, "think how young he is; think that he may never have known a mother's love, or the comfort of a home; that ill-usage and blows, or the want of bread, may have driven him to herd with men who have forced him to guilt. Aunt, dear aunt, for mercy's sake, think of this, before you let them drag this sick child to a prison, which in any case must be the grave of all his chances of amendment."
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She was too intent upon her work, and too earnest in what she said, and too composed and quiet altogether, to be on the watch for any look he might direct towards her in reply; so the shaft of his ungrateful glance fell harmless, and did not wound her.
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My dear young lady, crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims.
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The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master.He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the necessity of their having any.If he were to make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned - would never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die.
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As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above", I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.
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Discipline must be maintained.
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Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.
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They are so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a water-closet doormat.
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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.
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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!
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Hallo! A great deal of steam! the pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that. That was the pudding.
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He was consious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares, long, long, forgotten.
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And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content. “As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.
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Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.
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The aphorism "Whatever is, is right," would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence that nothing that ever was, was wrong.
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And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place, bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself.
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In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.
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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.