Charles Dickens Quotes
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May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?
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If an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitious man marry a wife on whose name there is a stain, which, though it originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by cold and sordid people upon her, and upon his children also: and, in exact proportion to his success in the world, be cast in his teeth, and made the subject of sneers against him: he may, no matter how generous and good his nature, one day repent of the connection he formed in early life; and she may have the pain and torture of knowing that he does so.
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Hours are golden links--God's tokens reaching heaven.
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" ... It is not my desire to wound the feelings of any person with whom I am connected in family bonds. I may be a hypocrite," said Mr. Pecksniff, cuttingly, "but I am not a brute."
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[She wasn't] a logically reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in heaven as high as heads.
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"Then what can you want to do now?" said the old lady,gaining courage. "I wants to make your flesh creep," replied the boy.
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Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives, the life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of friends.
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Things cannot be expected to turn up of themselves. We must in a measure assist to turn them up.
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Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn; and you are too sensible a man not to learn from this failure.
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My advice is to never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.
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I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight for me.
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If the world go wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never meant to go right.
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Come in, -- come in! and know me better, man! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me! You have never seen the like of me before!
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The sum of the whole is this: walk and be happy, walk and be healthy. "The best of all ways to lengthen our days" is not, as Mr. Thomas Moore has it, "to steal a few hours from night, my love;" but, with leave be it spoken, to walk steadily and with a purpose. The wandering man knows of certain ancients, far gone in years, who have staved off infirmities and dissolution by earnest walking,-hale fellows close upon eighty and ninety, but brisk as boys.
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Shall we speak of the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life?
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Time was with most of us, when Christmas Day, encircling all our limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and everyone round the Christmas fire, and make the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete.
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To a young heart everything is fun.
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If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked. So don't tell no more on 'em, Pip, and live well and die happy.
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So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.
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I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!
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There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.
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There are people enough to tread upon me in my lowly state, without my doing outrage to their feelings by possessing learning. Learning ain't for me. A person like myself had better not aspire. If he is to get on in life, he must get on 'umbly, Master Copperfield!
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All the housemaid hopes is, happiness for 'em - but marriage is a lottery, and the more she thinks about it, the more she feels the independence and the safety of a single life.
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When we have done our very, very best, papa, and that is not enough, then I think the right time must have come for asking help of others.