Charles Dickens Quotes
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At last, in the dead of the night, when the street was very still indeed, Little Dorrit laid the heavy head upon her bosom, and soothed her to sleep. And thus she sat at the gate, as it were alone; looking up at the stars, and seeing the clouds pass over them in their wild flight-which was the dance at Little Dorrit's party.
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To close the eyes, and give a seemly comfort to the apparel of the dead, is poverty's holiest touch of nature.
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When death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes.
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The forces that affect our lives, the influences that mold and shape us, are often like whispers in a different room, teasingly indistinct, apprehended only with difficulty.
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It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.
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It is an exquisite and beautiful thing in our nature, that, when the heart is touched and softened by some tranquil happiness or affectionate feeling, the memory of the dead comes over it most powerfully and irresistibly. It would seem almost as though our better thoughts and sympathies were charms, in virtue of which the soul is enabled to hold some vague and mysterious intercourse with the spirits of those whom we loved in life. Alas! how often and how long may these patient angels hover around us, watching for the spell which is so soon forgotten!
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In this way they went on, and on, and on-in the language of the story-books-until at last the village lights appeared before them, and the church spire cast a long reflection on the graveyard grass; as if it were a dial (alas, the truest in the world!) marking, whatever light shone out of Heaven, the flight of days and weeks and years, by some new shadow on that solemn ground.
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Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers, and are famous preservers of good looks.
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It is, as Mr. Rokesmith says, a matter of feeling, but Lor how many matters ARE matters of feeling!
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Every idiot who goes about with a 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.
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When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded places full of life.
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Old Marley was dead as a doornail... The wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile.
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An inebriated elderly gentleman in the last depths of shabbiness... played the calm and virtuous old men.
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Our affections, however laudable, in this transitory world, should never master us; we should guide them, guide them.
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There was no wind; there was no passing shadow on the deep shade of the night; there was no noise. The city lay behind him, lighted here and there, and starry worlds were hidden by the masonry of spire and roof that hardly made out any shapes against the sky. Dark and lonely distance lay around him everywhere, and the clocks were faintly striking two.
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Can you suppose there's any harm in looking as cheerful and being as cheerful as our poor circumstances will permit?
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Yes. He is quite a good fellow - nobody's enemy but his own.
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Anything that makes a noise is satisfactory to a crowd.
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When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!
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Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.
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... Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works, but like other beautiful works of His, they must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural that they should be wholly obscured, and that new feelings should usurp their place, as it is that the sweetest productions of the earth, left untended, should be choked with weeds and briers.
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It was very dark; but in the murky sky there were masses of cloud which shone with a lurid light, like monstrous heaps of copper that had been heated in a furnace, and were growing cold.
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In every life, no matter how full or empty ones purse, there is tragedy. It is the one promise life always fulfills. Thus, happiness is a gift, and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes, and to add to other peoples store of it.
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Day was breaking at Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. Stars were yet visible, but there was dull light in the east that was not the light of night. The moon had gone down, and a mist crept along the banks of the river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water was the ghost of water. This earth looked spectral, and so did the pale stars: while the cold eastern glare, expressionless as to heat or colour, with the eye of the firmament quenched, might have been likened to the stare of the dead.