“There are people enough to tread upon me in my lowly state, without my doing outrage to their feelings by possessing learning. Learning ain't for me. A person like myself had better not aspire. If he is to get on in life, he must get on 'umbly, Master Copperfield!”
Source: Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].
“'There may be some, perhaps - I don't know that there are - who abuse his kindness,' said Mr. Wickfield. 'Never be one of those, Trotwood, in anything. He is the least suspicious of mankind; and whether that's a merit, or whether it's a blemish, it deserves consideration in all dealings with the Doctor, great or small.”
Source: David Copperfield
“After tea, we discussed a variety of topics before the fire; and Mrs. Micawber was good enough to sing us (in a small, thin, flat voice, which I remembered to have considered, when I first knew her, the very table-beer of acoustics) the favourite ballads of "The Dashing White Sergeant", and "Little Tafflin".”
Source: David Copperfield (World Classics, Unabridged)
“He was the meekest of his sex, the mildest of little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to take up the less space. He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody else.”
Source: The Personal History of David Copperfield ... With Frontispiece by H. K. Browne
“I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up every line as he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I fully believed) like a snail.”
Source: Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].
“What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of my devotion to him.”
Source: Four Novels: Great Expectations, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, and Hard Times
“... what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.”
Source: David Copperfield
“All I would say is, that I can go abroad without your family coming forward to favour me, - in short, with a parting Shove of their cold shoulders; and that, upon the whole, I would rather leave England with such impetus as I possess, than derive any acceleration of it from that quarter.”
Source: The Personal History of David Copperfield
“"Madam," replied Mr. Micawber, "it is my intention to register such a vow on the virgin page of the future."”
Source: Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].
“The man who now confronted Gashford, was a squat, thickset personage, with a low, retreating forehead, a coarse shock head of hair, and eyes so small and near together, that his broken nose alone seemed to prevent their meeting and fusing into one of the usual size.”
Source: A Cyclopedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens
“Indeed the worthy housewife was of such a capricious nature, that she not only attained a higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in respect of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral in an instant, but would sometimes ring the changes backwards and forwards on all possible moods and flights in one short quarter of an hour; performing, as it were, a kind of triple bob major on the peal of instruments in the female belfry, with a skilfulness and rapidity of execution that astonished all who heard her.”
“One thing about this face was very strange and startling. You could not look upon it in its most cheerful mood without feeling that it had some extraordinary capacity of expressing terror. It was not on the surface. It was in no one feature that it lingered. You could not take the eyes or mouth, or lines upon the cheek, and say, if this or that were otherwise, it would not be so. Yet there it always lurked-something for ever dimly seen, but ever there, and never absent for a moment.”
Source: Barnaby Rudge, And, Hard Times: With Ten Illustrations
“It was the momentary yielding of a nature that had been disappointed from the dawn of its perceptions, but had not quite given up all its hopeful yearnings yet.”
Source: LITTLE DORRIT
“She had gained a reputation for beauty, and (which is often another thing) was beautiful.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
“He had a certain air of being a handsome man-which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man-which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.”
Source: LITTLE DORRIT
“Rattle me out of bed early, set me going, give me as short a time as you like to bolt my meals in, and keep me at it. Keep me always at it, and I'll keep you always at it, you keep somebody else always at it. There you are with the Whole Duty of Man in a commercial country.”
Source: Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].
“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.”
Source: Dickens Ultimate Christmas Collection: The Greatest Stories & Novels for Christmas Time: A Christmas Carol, Doctor Marigold, Oliver Twist, Tom Tiddler's Ground, The Holly-Tree and more (Illustrated): The Best Loved Christmas Classics in One Volume
“He had a sense of his dignity, which was of the most exquisite nature. He could detect a design upon it when nobody else had any perception of the fact. His life was made an agony by the number of fine scalpels that he felt to be incessantly engaged in dissecting his dignity.”
Source: LITTLE DORRIT
“She writhes under her life. A woman more angry, passionate, reckless, and revengeful never lived.”
Source: LITTLE DORRIT
“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.”
Source: LITTLE DORRIT
“In truth, no men on earth can cheer like Englishmen, who do so rally one another's blood and spirit when they cheer in earnest, that the stir is like the rush of their whole history, with all its standards waving at once, from Saxon Alfred's downwards.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
“Everything that Mr Smallweed's grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.”
Source: Bleak House
“The haggard aspect of the little old man was wonderfully suited to the place; he might have groped among old churches and tombs and deserted houses and gathered all the spoils with his own hands. There was nothing in the whole collection but was in keeping with himself nothing that looked older or more worn than he.”
Source: The Old Curiosity Shop
“He had a cringing manner, but a very harsh voice; and his blandest smiles were so extremely forbidding, that to have had his company under the least repulsive circumstances, one would have wished him to be out of temper that he might only scowl.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
“He was a very young boy; quite a little child. His hair still hung in curls about his face, and his eyes were very bright; but their light was of Heaven, not earth.”
Source: The Old Curiosity Shop
“Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations.”
“"Walter," she said, looking full upon him with her affectionate eyes, "like you, I hope for better things. I will pray for them, and believe that they will arrive."”
Source: Dombey and Son ... With frontispiece by H. K. Browne
“... The sun does not shine upon this fair earth to meet frowning eyes, depend upon it.”
Source: The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby
“Ah, Miss Harriet, it would do us no harm to remember oftener than we do, that vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!”
Source: Dombey and Son
“If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, to-night, 'I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or respect, of no human creature; I have won myself a tender place in no regard; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by!' your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they not?”
Source: A tale of two cities, with intr., notes, and analytical list of characters
“Recollections of the past and visions of the present come to bear me company; the meanest man to whom I have ever given alms appears, to add his mite of peace and comfort to my stock; and whenever the fire within me shall grow cold, to light my path upon this earth no more, I pray that it may be at such an hour as this, and when I love the world as well as I do now.”
Source: CHARLES DICKENS – The Complete Short Stories: 190+ Christmas Tales, Social Sketches, Tales for Children & Other Stories (Illustrated): A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man, Sketches by Boz, Mudfog Papers, Reprinted Pieces, Pearl-Fishing, Christmas Stories, Child's Dream of a Star, Holiday Romance…
“We part with tender relations stretching far behind us, that never can be exactly renewed, and with others dawning - yet before us.”
Source: Christmas Books
“... 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.”
Source: Ghost stories
“'I believe, Mr. Snitchey,' said Alfred, 'there are quiet victories and struggles, great sacrifices of self, and noble acts of heroism, in it - even in many of its apparent lightnesses and contradictions - not the less difficult to achieve, because they have no earthly chronicle or audience - done every day in nooks and corners, and in little households, and in men's and women's hearts - any one of which might reconcile the sternest man to such a world, and fill him with belief and hope in it.”
Source: The Complete Works of Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books
“She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be.”
Source: a tale of two cities
“I admire machinery as much is any man, and am as thankful to it as any man can be for what it does for us. But it will never be a substitute for the face of a man, with his soul in it, encouraging another man to be brave and true.”
Source: Christmas Stories from
“"Hope to the last!" said Newman, clapping him on the back. "Always hope; that's dear boy. Never leave off hoping; it don't answer. Do you mind me, Nick? it don't answer. Don't leave a stone unturned. It's always something, to know you've done the most you could. But, don't leave off hoping, or it's of no use doing anything. Hope, hope, to the last!"”
“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.”
Source: Oliver Twist. Great expectations
“... she indulged in melancholy - that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries.”
Source: Dombey and Son ... With frontispiece by H. K. Browne
“"Hope, you see, Wal'r," said the Captain, sagely, "Hope. It's that as animates you. Hope is a buoy, for which you overhaul your Little Warbler, sentimental diwision, but Lord, my lad, like any other buoy, it only floats; it can't be steered nowhere. Along with the figure-head of Hope,' said the Captain, 'there's a anchor; but what's the good of my having a anchor, if I can't find no bottom to let it go in?"”
Source: The Works of Charles Dickens
“"We will wait," answered little Alice, taking Nettie's hand in hers, and looking up to the sky, "we will wait - ever constant and true - till the times have got so changed as that everything helps us out, and nothing makes us ridiculous, and the fairies have come back. We will wait - ever constant and true - till we are eighty, ninety, or one hundred. And then the fairies will send US children, and we will help them out, poor pretty little creatures, if they pretend ever so much."”
Source: The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Other Pieces
“Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
“I have had my share of sorrows-more than the common lot, perhaps, but I have borne them ill. I have broken where I should have bent; and have mused and brooded, when my spirit should have mixed with all God's great creation.”
Source: Hard Times
“A man can well afford to be as bold as brass, my good fellow, when he gets gold in exchange!”
Source: The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
“" ... It is not my desire to wound the feelings of any person with whom I am connected in family bonds. I may be a hypocrite," said Mr. Pecksniff, cuttingly, "but I am not a brute."”
Source: The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
“... Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in emptying one's glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on one's nose.”
Source: Great Expectations
“If you could see my legs when I take my boots off, you'd form some idea of what unrequited affection is.”
“Dumb as a drum vith a hole in it, sir.”
“Man is but mortal: and there is a point beyond which human courage cannot extend. Mr. Pickwick gazed through his spectacles for an instant on the advancing mass, and then fairly turned his back and-we will not say fled; firstly, because it is an ignoble term, and, secondly, because Mr. Pickwick's figure was by no means adapted for that mode of retreat-he trotted away, at as quick a rate as his legs would convey him;.”
Source: The posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club
“... As to sleep, you know, I never sleep now. I might be a Watchman, except that I don't get any pay, and he's got nothing on his mind.”
Source: Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].
