Charles Dickens Quotes
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Old Mr. Rarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to, or to be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and selfish character, and that he had warped further and further out of the straight with time.
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Her heart-is given him, with all its love and truth. She would joyfully die with him, or, better than that, die for him. She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and think well of.
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Possibly we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the morning, and took off our coats to the work.
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A contented spirit is the sweetness of existence.
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He did each single thing as if he did nothing else.
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"You are a boy," said Mr. Dombey, suddenly and almost fiercely; "and what you think of, or affect to think of, is of little consequence. You have done well, Sir. Don't undo it."
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They enter, locking themselves in, descend the rugged steps, and are down in the Crypt. The lantern is not wanted, for the moonlight strikes in at the groined windows, bare of glass, the broken frames for which cast patterns on the ground. The heavy pillars which support the roof engender masses of black shade, but between them there are lanes of light.
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Nothing of what is nobly done is ever lost.
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Don't be afraid! We won't make an author of you, while there's an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.
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It was the beginning of a day in June; the deep blue sky unsullied by a cloud, and teeming with brilliant light. The streets were, as yet, nearly free from passengers, the houses and shops were closed, and the healthy air of morning fell like breath from angels, on the sleeping town.
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What are the odds so long as the fire of the soul is kindled at the taper of conviviality, and the wing of friendship never molts a feather?
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I must do something or I shall wear my heart away.
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He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart.
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Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It's so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.
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And still I stood looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, but always miserable.
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Death is a mighty, universal truth.
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Everything that Mr Smallweed's grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.
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Then idiots talk....of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such parrot gabble! What the deuce!....But show me a good opportunity, show me something really worth being energetic about, and I'll show you energy.
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"My comfort is," said Susan, looking back at Mr. Dombey, "that I have told a piece of truth this day which ought to have been told long before and can't be told too often or too plain..."
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I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit for nothing.
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You should know," said Estella. "I am what you have made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me.
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It is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished . . .
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Try to do unto others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better that they should fail than you should.
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There either is or is not, that’s the way things are. The colour of the day. The way it felt to be a child. The saltwater on your sunburnt legs. Sometimes the water is yellow, sometimes it’s red. But what colour it may be in memory, depends on the day. I’m not going to tell you the story the way it happened. I’m going to tell it the way I remember it.