“For who can wonder that man should feel a vague belief in tales of disembodied spirits wandering through those places which they once dearly affected, when he himself, scarcely less separated from his old world than they, is for ever lingering upon past emotions and bygone times, and hovering, the ghost of his former self, about the places and people that warmed his heart of old?”
Source: The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Other Stories
“Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.”
“"People can't die, along the coast," said Mr. Peggotty, "except when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born, unless it's pretty nigh in - not properly born, till flood. He's a going out with the tide. It's ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it turns, he'll hold his own till past the flood, and go out with the next tide."”
“To be allowed to call her "Dora", to write to her, to dote upon and worship her, to have reason to think that when she was with other people she was yet mindful of me, seemed to me the summit of human ambition - I am sure it was the summit of mine.”
Source: David Copperfield (World Classics, Unabridged)
“Mrs. Lammle's manner changed under the poor silly girl's embraces, and she turned extremely pale: directing one appealing look, first to Mrs. Boffin, and then to Mr. Boffin. Both understood her instantly, with a more delicate subtlety than much better educated people, whose perception came less directly from the heart, could have brought to bear upon the case.”
Source: Our Mutual Friend
“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].
“... what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.”
Source: David Copperfield
“If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden in mine - which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity - it is the key to many reservations.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
“Mrs. Boffin and me, ma'am, are plain people, and we don't want to pretend to anything, nor yet to go round and round at anything because there's always a straight way to everything.”
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].
“Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered at, and not very blamable; but, he had made a lamentation and uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always contagion in weakness and selfishness.”
Source: Christmas Stories from
“I know nothing of philosophical philanthropy. But I know what I have seen, and what I have looked in the face in this world here, where I find myself. And I tell you this, my friend, that there are people (men and women both, unfortunately) who have no good in them-none. That there are people whom it is necessary to detest without compromise. That there are people who must be dealt with as enemies of the human race. That there are people who have no human heart, and who must be crushed like savage beasts and cleared out of the way.”
Source: THE GREATEST DICKENS CLASSICS (Illustrated Edition): Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times, David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, The Life of Dickens
“Affery, like greater people, had always been right in her facts, and always wrong in the theories she deduced from them.”
Source: LITTLE DORRIT
“I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me.”
Source: Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit
“My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the people governed is, on the whole, illimitable.”
“It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
“He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows; and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk — that anything — could give him so much happiness.”
“So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.”
Source: A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Oprah's Book Club): Two Novels
“You are too young to know how the world changes everyday,' said Mrs Creakle, 'and how the people in it pass away. But we all have to learn it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when we are old, some of us at all times in our lives.”
Source: David Copperfield (World Classics, Unabridged)
“What connexion can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!”
Source: Bleak House
“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river where it flows among green airs and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.... Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.”
“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”
Source: A Christmas Carol (Sparklesoup Classics)
“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content. “As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”
Source: Charles Dickens: The Complete Christmas Books and Stories [A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, A Christmas Tree, The Cricket on the Hearth, etc] (Book House)
“Mr Jarndyce, and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarked that there were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.”
Source: Bleak House
“People like us don't go out at night cause people like them see us for what we are”
“We spent as much money as we could and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.”
Source: Great Expectations Thrift Study Edition
“A multitude of people and yet solitude.”
Source: British Classics: A Tale of Two Cities (Illustrated)
“I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and God.”
Source: The Complete Novels of Charles Dickens: 20 Illustrated Classics in One Volume: Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield…
“Mrs Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her clenliness more umcomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.”
“Nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the onset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have a malady in the less attractive forms.”
“it's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly.”
Source: A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Stories
“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
“Some people are nobody's enemies but their own”
Source: The Adventures of Oliver Twist: Also, Pictures from Italy, and American Notes for General Circulation
“Father Time is not always a hard parent and though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigor. With such people the gray head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.”
Source: Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty'
“Their demeanor is invariably morose, sullen, clownish and repulsive. I should think there is not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute of humor, vivacity, or the capacity for enjoyment.”
Source: THE GREATEST DICKENS CLASSICS (Illustrated Edition): Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times, David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, The Life of Dickens
“It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.”
Source: The Letters of Charles Dickens
“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.”
Source: A Cyclopedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens
“The privileges of the side-table included the small prerogatives of sitting next to the toast, and taking two cups of tea to other people's one.”
Source: Martin Chuzzlewi
“If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.”
Source: The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc
“Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.”
Source: Oliver Twist
“When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.”
Source: The Pickwick Papers: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
“May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?”
Source: The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby
“Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.”
Source: A Cyclopedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens
“I recollected one story there was in the village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning.”
Source: Master Humphrey's Clock
“If an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitious man marry a wife on whose name there is a stain, which, though it originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by cold and sordid people upon her, and upon his children also: and, in exact proportion to his success in the world, be cast in his teeth, and made the subject of sneers against him: he may, no matter how generous and good his nature, one day repent of the connection he formed in early life; and she may have the pain and torture of knowing that he does so.”
“It being a remarkable fact in theatrical history, but one long since established beyond dispute, that it is a hopeless endeavor to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in.”
Source: Nicholas Nickleby. Martin Chuzzlewit. American notes
“It was one of those hot, silent nights, when people sit at windows listening for the thunder which they know will shortly break; when they recall dismal tales of hurricanes and earthquakes; and of lonely travellers on open plains, and lonely ships at sea, struck by lightning.”
Source: Martin Chuzzlewit
“I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown people who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.”
“I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in consequence.”
Source: A Cyclopedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens
