Charles Dickens Quotes
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If the parks be "the lungs of London" we wonder what Greenwich Fair is--a periodical breaking out, we suppose--a sort of spring rash.
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A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.
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A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.
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His wardrobe was extensive-very extensive-not strictly classical perhaps, not quite new, nor did it contain any one garment made precisely after the fashion of any age or time, but everything was more or less spangled; and what can be prettier than spangles!
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Why then we should drop into poetry.
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Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have got a little, it is often easy to get more.
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Missionaries are perfect nuisances and leave every place worse than they found it.
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If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up! If I spoke a gentle word in your hearing, may it deafen you! If I touched you with my lips, may the touch be poison to you! A curse upon this roof that gave me shelter! Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon all belonging to you!
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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.
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I am a neat hand at cookery, and I'll tell you what I knocked up for my Christmas-eve dinner in the Library Cart. I knocked up a beefsteak-pudding for one, with two kidneys, a dozen oysters, and a couple of mushrooms thrown in. It's a pudding to put a man in good humour with everything, except the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat.
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If the law supposes that,' said Mr Bumble...' the law is an ass - an idiot.
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... The sun does not shine upon this fair earth to meet frowning eyes, depend upon it.
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There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
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Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.
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'Don't you be afraid of hurting the boy,' he says.
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"I take my leave of you, Mr. Creakle, and all of you," said Mr. Mell, glancing round the room, and again patting me gently on the shoulders. "James Steerforth, the best wish I can leave you is that you may come to be ashamed of what you have done today. At present I would prefer to see you anything rather than a friend, to me, or to anyone in whom I feel an interest."
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It is the fate of most men who mingle with the world, and attain even the prime of life, to make many real friends, and lose them in the course of nature. It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the full extent of their misfortunes; for they are required to furnish an account of them besides.
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The shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.
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The receptive attitude enables one mind to fix itself to another as by spiritual grappling-irons. When you see that every word you utter us taken in, and weighed, and measured by your listener, you cannot free yourself from the influence of his presence. You are compelled to have in your thoughts not only the words you utter, but the man to whom they are spoken. You must not only talk, and talk well, but you must talk to him.
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He had a certain air of being a handsome man-which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man-which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.
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"Drink with me, my dear," said Mr. Weller. "Put your lips to this here tumbler, and then I can kiss you by deputy."
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Grief never mended no broken bones.
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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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It is one of those problems of human nature, which may be noted down, but not solved; - although Ralph felt no remorse at that moment for his conduct towards the innocent, true-hearted girl; although his libertine clients had done precisely what he had expected, precisely what he most wished, and precisely what would tend most to his advantage, still he hated them for doing it, from the very bottom of his soul.