Charles Dickens Quotes
Dickens writes that an event, "began to be forgotten, as most affairs are, when wonder, having no fresh food to support it, dies away of itself.
I wish I were the Commander in Chief in India... I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested.
If you could see my legs when I take my boots off, you'd form some idea of what unrequited affection is.
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.
Up the two terrace flights of steps the rain ran wildly, and beat at the great door, like a swift messenger rousing those within;.
Can I view thee panting, lying On thy stomach, without sighing; Can I unmoved see thee dying On a log Expiring frog!
The cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.
Judiciously show a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one day.
She's the sort of woman now,' said Mould, . . . 'one would almost feel disposed to bury for nothing: and do it neatly, too!
"O, Mrs. Clennam, Mrs. Clennam," said Little Dorrit, "angry feelings and unforgiving deeds are no comfort and no guide to you and me."
I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in consequence.
Good never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning.
You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. Stick to Facts, sir!
... The sun does not shine upon this fair earth to meet frowning eyes, depend upon it.
"I saw her, in the fire, but now. I hear her in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night," returned the haunted man.
An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music.
Love, however, is very materially assisted by a warm and active imagination: which has a long memory, and will thrive, for a considerable time, on very slight and sparing food.
... I have read in your face, as plain as if it was a book, that but for some trouble and sorrow we should never know half the good there is about us.
You can't make a head and brains out of a brass knob with nothing in it. You couldn't do it when your uncle George was living much less when he's dead.
There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.
I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.
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.
and it was not until I began to think, that I began fully to know how wrecked I was, and how the ship in which I had sailed was gone to pieces.
The wine-shops breed, in physical atmosphere of malaria and a moral pestilence of envy and vengeance, the men of crime and revolution.
When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded places full of life.
The beating of my heart was so violent and wild that I felt as if my life were breaking from me.
... still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine.
Mr. and Mrs. Boffin sat staring at mid-air, and Mrs. Wilfer sat silently giving them to understand that every breath she drew required to be drawn with a self-denial rarely paralleled in history.
In particular, there was a butler in a blue coat and bright buttons, who gave quite a winey flavour to the table beer; he poured it out so superbly.
"It's an old habit of mine, Wal'r," said the Captain, "any time these fifty year. When you see Ned Cuttle bite his nails, Wal'r, then you may know that Ned Cuttle's aground."
By the by, who ever knew a man who never read or wrote neither who hadn't got some small back parlour which he would call a study!
The very dogs were all asleep, and the flies, drunk with moist sugar in the grocer's shop, forgot their wings and briskness, and baked to death in dusty corners of the window.
If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked. So don't tell no more on 'em, Pip, and live well and die happy.