Charles Dickens Quotes
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The sergeant was describing a military life. It was all drinking, he said, except that there were frequent intervals of eating and love making.
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Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we'd give blood.
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I loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I loved you madly.
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Discipline must be maintained.
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The nephew revenges himself for this, by holding his breath and terrifying his kinswoman with the dread belief that he has made up his mind to burst. Regardless of whispers and shakes, he swells and becomes discoloured, and yet again swells and becomes discoloured, until the aunt can bear it no longer, but leads him out, with no visible neck, and with his eyes going before him like a prawn's.
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"It wasn't the wine," murmured Mr. Snodgrass, in a broken voice. "It was the salmon."
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It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
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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!
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When I have heard him talking to Papa during the sittings for the picture, I have sat wondering whether it could be that he has no belief in anybody else, because he has no belief in himself.
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I am what you designed me to be.I am your blade. You cannot now complain if you also feel the hurt.
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And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.
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He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been, in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away, by the fervour of this reproach.
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Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?
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Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
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Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.
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Try not to associate bodily defect with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason.
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Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect.
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I have always thought of Christmas time... as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time.
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Its very pulse, if I may use the word, was like no other clock. It did not mark the flight of every moment with a gentle second stroke, as though it would check old Time, and have him stay his pace in pity, but measured it with one sledge-hammer beat, as if its business were to crush the seconds as they came trooping on, and remorselessly to clear a path before the Day of Judgment.
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'No one is useless in this world,' retorted the Secretary, 'who lightens the burden of it for any one else.'
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If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world's end without fear. I can give up nothing for you – I have nothing to resign, and no one to forsake; but all my love and life shall be devoted to you, and with my last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense and memory left.
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The dreams of childhood - it's airy fables, its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond; so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown.
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A man ain't got no right to be a public man, unless he meets the public views.
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If I may ride with you, Citizen Evremonde, will you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage." As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young fingers, and touched his lips. "Are you dying for him?" she whispered. "And his wife and child. Hush! Yes." "Oh, you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?" "Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.