Charles Dickens Quotes

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.

Old Time, that greatest and longest established spinner of all!... his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.

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.

Remember, to the last, that while there is life there is hope.

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.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind.

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that.

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

Our affections, however laudable, in this transitory world, should never master us; we should guide them, guide them.

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.

Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.

No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day.

He was consious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares, long, long, forgotten.

The word of a gentleman is as good as his bond — sometimes better; as in the present case, where his bond might prove but a doubtful sort of security.

'Mind and matter,' said the lady in the wig, 'glide swift into the vortex if immensity. Howls the sublime, and softly sleeps the calm Ideal, in the whispering chambers of Imagination.'

Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.

A man in public life expects to be sneered at -- it is the fault of his elevated situation, and not of himself.

It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.

Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

I have heard it said that as we keep our birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of dead people, who are not easy in their graves, keep the day they died upon.

If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish.

We can refute assertions, but who can refute silence?

I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuadinig arguments of my best friends.

Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.

Some people are nobody's enemies but their own

Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

He would make a lovely corpse.

Time and tide will wait for no man, saith the adage. But all men have to wait for time and tide.

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

It is not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something.

You are in every line I have ever read.

I want to escape from myself. For when I do start up and stare myself seedily in the face, as happens to be my case at present, my blankness is inconceivable--indescribable--my misery amazing.

A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil.

Remembrance, like a candle, burns brightest at Christmastime.

The aim of talk should be like the aim of a flying arrow -- to hit the mark; but to this end there must be a mark to hit, that is, there must be a listener.

It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.

We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.

Ah, if only I had brought a cigar with me! This would have established my identity.

If her eyes had no expression, it was probably because they had nothing to express. If she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name or any other inscription on her face.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

Thus violent deeds live after men upon the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will survive in mournful shapes long after those who worked the desolation are but atoms of earth themselves.

He was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset

There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.

Annual income is £ 20, the cost is 19, you will feel happiness. If annual income of £ 20, the cost is £ 20.6, you will see suffering