Charles Dickens Quotes

When we have done our very, very best, papa, and that is not enough, then I think the right time must have come for asking help of others.

To close the eyes, and give a seemly comfort to the apparel of the dead, is poverty's holiest touch of nature.

…a lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper --a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable.

Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.

He describes it as a large apartment, with a red brick floor and a capacious chimney; the ceiling garnished with hams, sides of bacon, and ropes of onions.

Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.

My daughter, there are times of moral danger when the hardest virtuous resolution to form is flight, and when the most heroic bravery is flight.

Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it were not.

The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you

My dear if you could give me a cup of tea to clear my muddle of a head I should better understand your affairs.

And I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States.

Rich folks may ride on camels, but it ain't so easy for 'em to see out of a needle's eye.

If the parks be "the lungs of London" we wonder what Greenwich Fair is--a periodical breaking out, we suppose--a sort of spring rash.

Skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape.

Mankind was my business... charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature .

Such is hope, heaven's own gift to struggling mortals, pervading, like some subtle essence from the skies, all things both good and bad.

Poverty and oysters always seem to go together.

There is a Sunday conscience as well as a Sunday coat; and those who make religion a secondary concern put the coat and conscience carefully by to put on only once a week.

An inebriated elderly gentleman in the last depths of shabbiness... played the calm and virtuous old men.

Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.

Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.

Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop," returned madame; "but don't tell me.

Its matter was not new to me, but was presented in a new aspect. It shook me in my habit - the habit of nine-tenths of the world - of believing that all was right about me, because I was used to it.

... what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage more so.

Troubles are exceedingly gregarious in their nature, and flying in flocks are apt to perch capriciously.

I made a compact with myself that in my person literature should stand by itself, of itself, and for itself.

So new to him," she muttered, "so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us!

"It wasn't the wine," murmured Mr. Snodgrass, in a broken voice. "It was the salmon."

The cramped monotony of my existence grinds me away by the grain.

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.

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?

Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.

And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.

I should never have made my success in life if I had not bestowed upon the least thing I have ever undertaken the same attention and care that I have bestowed upon the greatest.

True love believes everything, and bears everything, and trusts everything.

Least said, soonest mended

It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable, honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world, but it is very possible to know how it has touched one's self in going by.

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!

Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again.

if the world go wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never meant to go right.

United metropolitan improved hot muffin and crumpet baking and punctual delivery company.

There wasn't room to swing a cat there.

... No, the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me.

When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained -not shown- yet always ready.

Have I yet to learn that the hardest and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any earthly record, and are suffered every day!

Battledore and shuttlecock's a wery good game, vhen you an't the shuttlecock and two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too exciting to be pleasant.

The more man knows of man, the better for the common brotherhood among men.