Charles Dickens Quotes
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In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its coming and its going.
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She was the most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from one story to another was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea.
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Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.
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It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter.
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When you drink of the water, don't forget the spring from which it flows.
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Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
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It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.
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The great commander, who seemed by expression of his visage to be always on the look-out for something in the extremest distance, and to have no ocular knowledge of anything within ten miles, made no reply whatever.
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The dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it.
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Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.
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'She means well,' said Mr Jarndyce, hastily. 'The wind’s in the east.' 'It was in the north, sir, as we came down,' observed Richard. 'My dear Rick,' said Mr Jarndyce, poking the fire, 'I’ll take an oath it’s either in the east, or going to be. I am always conscious of an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in the east.'
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It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they always say in Turkey, when they cut the wrong man's head off.
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Skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape.
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It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up.
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Never imitate the eccentricities of genius, but toil after it in its truer flights. They are not so easy to follow, but they lead to higher regions.
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And it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
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If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
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There lives at least one being who can never change-one being who would be content to devote his whole existence to your happiness-who lives but in your eyes-who breathes but in your smiles-who bears the heavy burden of life itself only for you.
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Mr. Augustus Minns was a bachelor, of about forty as he said - of about eight-and-forty as his friends said. He was always exceedingly clean, precise, and tidy: perhaps somewhat priggish, and the most retiring man in the world.
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There is no such passion in human nature, as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen.
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Indeed the worthy housewife was of such a capricious nature, that she not only attained a higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in respect of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral in an instant, but would sometimes ring the changes backwards and forwards on all possible moods and flights in one short quarter of an hour; performing, as it were, a kind of triple bob major on the peal of instruments in the female belfry, with a skilfulness and rapidity of execution that astonished all who heard her.
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Friendless I can never be, for all mankind are my kindred, and I am on ill terms with no one member of my great family.
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He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful.
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Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people we most despise.