Charles Dickens Quotes

Mystery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries.

Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.

God bless us, every one!

Marley was dead, to begin with ... This must be distintly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast.

Let me see you ride a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you have a head upon your shoulders, I'll knock your bonnet off, and tread upon it!

Every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy. -Miss Havisham

A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!

Probably every new and eagerly expected garment ever put on since clothes came in, fell a trifle short of the wearer's expectation.

I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.

Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.

Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.

It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.

A word in earnest is as good as a speech.

What lawsuits grow out of the graves of rich men, every day; sowing perjury, hatred, and lies among near kindred, where there should be nothing but love!

The dreams of childhood - it's airy fables, its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond; so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown.

For not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent's love.

In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.

It is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded.

And this is the eternal law. For, Evil often stops short at istelf and dies with the doer of it! but Good, never.

There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.

Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It's so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.

Friendship? Yes Please.

Man cannot really improve himself without improving others.

I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.

I stole her heart away and put ice in its place.

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself.

There's more of gravey than grave about you, whatever you are!" - Scrooge, referring to Marley's ghost which he believes is a hallucination from food poisoning

A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once won, goes through fire and water for the winner, and never changes, and is never daunted.

I have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can't beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry it.

Many merry Christmases, many happy New Years. Unbroken friendships, great accumulations of cheerful recollections and affections on earth, and heaven for us all.

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.

Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

A new heart for a New Year, always!

The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far we are pursued by nothing else.

He was bolder in the daylight-most men are.

things cannot be expected to turn up of themselves. We must in a measure assist to turn them up

"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."

So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

This is a world of action, and not moping and droning in.

I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.

Black are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead

The coffee was boiling over a charcoal fire, and large slices of bread and butter were piled one upon the other like deals in a lumber yard.

And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place, bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself.