Charles Dickens Quotes
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The clouds were drifting over the moon at their giddiest speed, at one time wholly obscuring her, at another, suffering her to burst forth in full splendor and shed her light on all the objects around; anon, driving over her again, with increased velocity, and shrouding everything in darkness.
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"O' course I came to look arter you, my darlin'," replied Mr. Weller; for once permitting his passion to get the better of his veracity.
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I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.
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... As to sleep, you know, I never sleep now. I might be a Watchman, except that I don't get any pay, and he's got nothing on his mind.
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If her eyes had no expression, it was probably because they had nothing to express. If she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name or any other inscription on her face.
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I don't like that sort of school... where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged... where I have never seen among the pupils, whether boys or girls, anything but little parrots and small calculating machines.
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He had a cringing manner, but a very harsh voice; and his blandest smiles were so extremely forbidding, that to have had his company under the least repulsive circumstances, one would have wished him to be out of temper that he might only scowl.
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Take the pencil and write under my name, 'I forgive her.
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Some women's faces are, in their brightness, a prophecy; and some, in their sadness, a history.
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Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.
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The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.
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The American elite is almost beyond redemption. . . . Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong. Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is one great moral mush--sophistry washed down with Chardonnay. The ordinary citizens, thank goodness, still adhere to absolutes.... It is they who have saved the republic from creeping degradation while their 'betters' were derelict.
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A demd, damp, moist, unpleasant body!
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Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.
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Morning drew on apace. The air became more sharp and piercing, as its first dull hue: the death of night, rather than the birth of day: glimmered faintly in the sky. The objects which had looked dim and terrible in the darkness, grew more and more defined, and gradually resolved into their familiar shapes. The rain came down, thick and fast; and pattered, noisily, among the leafless bushes.
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Circumstances may accumulate so strongly even against an innocent man, that directed, sharpened, and pointed, they may slay him.
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The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shews in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven: and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.
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Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own.
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Never sign a valentine with your own name.
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I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt, and, of course, if it ceased to beat, I would cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense.
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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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You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell. What I mean is that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me.
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Newman cast a despairing glance at his small store of fuel, but, not having the courage to say no-a word which in all his life he never had said at the right time, either to himself or anyone else-gave way to the proposed arrangement.
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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.