Charles Dickens Quotes

You will profit by the failure, and will avoid it another time. I have done a similar thing myself, in construction, often. Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn.

My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the people governed is, on the whole, illimitable.

A man can well afford to be as bold as brass, my good fellow, when he gets gold in exchange!

The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.

There are hopes, the bloom of whose beauty would be spoiled by the trammels of description; too lovely, too delicate, too sacred for words, they should only be known through the sympathy of hearts.

My imagination would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention

[I]t seemed as if the streets were absorbed by the sky, and the night were all in the air.

And from that hour his poor maimed spirit, only remembering the place where it had broken its wings, cancelled the dream through which it had since groped, and knew of nothing beyond the Marshalsea.

I was a blacksmith's boy but yesterday; I am - what shall I say I am today?

I would like to be going all over the kingdom...and acting everywhere. There's nothing in the world equal to seeing the house rise at you, one sea of delightful faces, one hurrah of applause!

Them which is of other naturs thinks different.

Meow says the cat ,quack says the duck , Bow wow wow says the dog ! Grrrr!

Time has been lost and opportunity thrown away, but I am yet a young man, and may retrieve it.

She writhes under her life. A woman more angry, passionate, reckless, and revengeful never lived.

‎And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.

And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done-- done, see you!-- under that sky there, every day.

[She wasn't] a logically reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in heaven as high as heads.

There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind Junior.

You touch some of the reasons for my going, not for my staying away.

There can't be a quarrel without two parties, and I won't be one. I will be a friend to you in spite of you. So now you know what you've got to expect

Sudden shifts and changes are no bad preparation for political life.

It will be your duty, and it will be your pleasure too to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities that she has, and not by the qualities she may not have.

My meaning is, that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.

But Rosa soon made the discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn't read fairly. She cut the love-scenes, interpolated passages in praise of female celibacy, and was guilty of other glaring pious frauds.

We must leave the discovery of this mystery, like all others, to time, and accident, and Heaven's pleasure.

The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do I believe when we go back to them

We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!

[S]he stood for some moments gazing at the sisters, with affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.

Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.

...and to-morrow looked in my face more steadily than I could look at it

I believe the spreading of Catholicism to be the most horrible means of political and social degradation left in the world.

Nothing of what is nobly done is ever lost.

We never tire of the friendships we form with books.

Heaven suits the back to the burden.

A man must take the fat with the lean.

We must scrunch or be scrunched.

A man ain't got no right to be a public man, unless he meets the public views.

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.

My hair stands on end at the cost and charges of these boys. Why was I ever a father! Why was my father ever a father!

A contented spirit is the sweetness of existence.

We all draw a little and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money.

Possibly we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the morning, and took off our coats to the work.

Are there no prisons?

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.

Your voice and music are the same to me.

You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer,” said Miss Pross, in her breathing. “Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.

Joe gave me some more gravy.

I wear the chains I forged in life.

"Well," said my aunt, "this is his boy - his son. He would be as like his father as it's possible to be, if he was not so like his mother, too."

Anything that makes a noise is satisfactory to a crowd.