Charles Dickens Quotes
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The rain and hail pattered against the glass; the chimneys quaked and rocked; the crazy casement rattled with the wind, as though an impatient hand inside were striving to burst it open. But no hand was there, and it opened no more.
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He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two.
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And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
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Time and tide will wait for no man, saith the adage. But all men have to wait for time and tide.
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"It wasn't the wine," murmured Mr. Snodgrass, in a broken voice. "It was the salmon."
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But the words she spoke of Mrs Harris, lambs could not forgive ... nor worms forget.
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The law is an ass, an idiot.
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Captain Cuttle, like all mankind, little knew how much hope had survived within him under discouragement, until he felt its death-shock.
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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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"Would you, do you, my dear?" rejoined the Captain ... "I don't know. It's difficult navigation. She's very hard to carry on with, my dear. You never can tell how she'll head, you see. She's full one minute, and round upon you next."
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I could settle down into a state of equable low spirits, and resign myself to coffee.
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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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What greater gift than the love of a cat.
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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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She's the sort of woman now,' said Mould, . . . 'one would almost feel disposed to bury for nothing: and do it neatly, too!
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On the eve of long voyages or an absence of many years, friends who are tenderly attached will seperate with the usual look, the usual pressure of the hand, planning one final interview for the morrow, while each well knows that it is but a poor feint to save the pain of uttering that one word, and the meeting will never be. Should possibilities be worse to bear than certainties?
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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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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.
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The rippling of the river seemed to cause a correspondent stir in his uneasy reflections. He would have laid them asleep if he could, but they were in movement, like the stream, and all tending one way with a strong current.
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Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen.
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All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.
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To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan and watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to the falling rain, and crouch for warmth beneath the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things - but not so dismal as the wandering up and down where shelter is, and beds and sleepers are by thousands; a houseless rejected creature.
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The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.
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The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance.