Charles Dickens Quotes
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"The twins no longer derive their sustenance from Nature's founts - in short," said Mr. Micawber, in one of his bursts of confidence, "they are weaned..."
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If a pig could give his mind to anything, he would not be a pig.
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Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.
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"Ay," said the Captain, reverentially; "it's a almighty element. There's wonders in the deep, my pretty. Think on it when the winds is roaring and the waves is rowling. Think on it when the stormy nights is so pitch dark," said the Captain, solemnly holding up his hook, "as you can't see your hand afore you, excepting when the wiwid lightning reweals the same; and when you drive, drive, drive through the storm and dark, as if you was a driving, head on, to the world without end."
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Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.
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"There is no deception now, Mr. Weller. Tears," said Job, with a look of momentary slyness, "tears are not the only proofs of distress, nor the best ones."
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In fine weather the old gentelman is almost constantly in the garden; and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out the window at it, by the hour together. He has always something to do there, and you will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and planting, with manifest delight.
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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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It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that this detestable cant of false humility might have originated out of the Heep family. I had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the seed.
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We need never be ashamed of our tears.
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Some medical beast had revived tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like a new fence.
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Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter's day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! It is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest things in life... are but shadows; and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these.
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Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.
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Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day.
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He had a sense of his dignity, which was of the most exquisite nature. He could detect a design upon it when nobody else had any perception of the fact. His life was made an agony by the number of fine scalpels that he felt to be incessantly engaged in dissecting his dignity.
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Of all bad listeners, the worst and most terrible to encounter is the man who is so fond of listening that he wishes to hear, not only your conversation, but that of every other person in the room.
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It is an old prerogative of kings to govern everything but their passions.
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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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And I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States.
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The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.
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Some people are nobody's enemies but their own.
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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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How beautiful you are! You are more beautiful in anger than in repose. I don't ask you for your love; give me yourself and your hatred; give me yourself and that pretty rage; give me yourself and that enchanting scorn; it will be enough for me.
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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!