“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.”
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].
“Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.”
“The shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
“"We thought that, perhaps," said I, hesitating, "it is right to begin with the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted for them."”
Source: Bleak House
“The plain rule is to do nothing in the dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never to put his foot where he cannot see the ground.”
Source: Bleak House
“But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat.”
Source: Bleak House
“The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course.”
Source: a tale of two cities
“We owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.”
Source: all the year round
“"It's nothing," returned Mrs Chick. "It's merely change of weather. We must expect change."”
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].
“I'm awful dull, but I hope I've beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!”
Source: all the year round
“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)
“"Lord bless you!" said Mr. Omer, resuming his pipe, "a man must take the fat with the lean; that's what he must make up his mind to, in this life. "”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Dombey and Son
“This fine young man had all the inclination to be a profligate of the first water, and only lacked the one good trait in the common catalogue of debauched vices - open-handedness - to be a notable vagabond. But there his griping and penurious habits stepped in; and as one poison will sometimes neutralise another, when wholesome remedies would not avail, so he was restrained by a bad passion from quaffing his full measure of evil, when virtue might have sought to hold him back in vain.”
Source: Children's Tales from Dickens – The Great Classics & The Wonderful Stories for Children (Illustrated Edition): Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, Holiday Romance, The Old Curiosity Shop, Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, Christmas Stories, A Child’s Dream of a Star…
“... Treachery don't come natural to beaming youth; but trust and pity, love and constancy,-they do, thank God!”
Source: Novels
“Captain Cuttle, like all mankind, little knew how much hope had survived within him under discouragement, until he felt its death-shock.”
Source: Dombey and Son
“Strong mental agitation and disturbance was no novelty to him, even before his late sufferings. It never is, to obstinate and sullen natures; for they struggle hard to be such.”
Source: Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son, Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation
“Although a man may lose a sense of his own importance when he is a mere unit among a busy throng, all utterly regardless of him, it by no means follows that he can dispossess himself, with equal facility, of a very strong sense of the importance and magnitude of his cares.”
Source: The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby
“An observer of men who finds himself steadily repelled by some apparently trifling thing in a stranger is right to give it great weight. It may be the clue to the whole mystery. A hair or two will show where a lion is hidden. A very little key will open a very heavy door.”
Source: The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Other Stories
“"Some persons hold," he pursued, still hesitating, "that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart..."”
Source: Hard Times
“Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement.”
Source: Nicholas Nickleby: Easyread Edition
“"There are strings," said Mr. Tappertit, flourishing his bread-and-cheese knife in the air, "in the human heart that had better not be wibrated..."”
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].
“... Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works, but like other beautiful works of His, they must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural that they should be wholly obscured, and that new feelings should usurp their place, as it is that the sweetest productions of the earth, left untended, should be choked with weeds and briers.”
Source: Works: ¬The life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby ; 2
“Everybody said so. Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right.”
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)
“... I feel certain that his tale is true. Feeling that certainty, I befriend him. As long as that certainty shall last, I will befriend him. And if any consideration could shake me in this resolve, I should be so ashamed of myself for my meanness, that no man's good opinion - no, nor no woman's - so gained, could compensate me for the loss of my own.”
Source: The Complete Works of Charles Dickens: Edwin Drood and Miscellaneous
“"There is no deception now, Mr. Weller. Tears," said Job, with a look of momentary slyness, "tears are not the only proofs of distress, nor the best ones."”
Source: A Cyclopedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens
“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].
“I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to know that this was all my fault, and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe would have been easier with me. I felt impatient of him and out of temper with him; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head.”
Source: Great Expectations
“Some philosophers tell us that selfishness is at the root of our best loves and affections. Mr. Dombey's young child was, from the beginning, so distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or (which is the same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that there is no doubt his parental affection might have been easily traced, like many a goodly superstructure of fair fame, to a very low foundation.”
Source: Dombey and Son ... With frontispiece by H. K. Browne
“He was bolder in the daylight-most men are.”
Source: The Pickwick Papers
“A dangerous quality, if real; and a not less dangerous one, if feigned.”
Source: Dombey and Son ... With frontispiece by H. K. Browne
“There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those about him, in preference to a sullen, slovenly fellow, who works doggedly on, regardless of his own clothing and that of his wife and children, and seeming to take pleasure or pride in nothing.”
Source: Sunday Under Three Heads: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition
“It has always been my opinion since I first possessed such a thing as an opinion, that the man who knows only one subject is next tiresome to the man who knows no subject. Therefore, in the course of my life I have taught myself whatever I could, and although I am not an educated man, I am able, I am thankful to say, to have an intelligent interest in most things.”
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
“... 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.”
Source: Great Expectations
“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
“It is, as Mr. Rokesmith says, a matter of feeling, but Lor how many matters ARE matters of feeling!”
Source: The Works of Charles Dickens: Our mutual friend
“No one has the least regard for the man; with them all, he has been an object of avoidance, suspicion, and aversion; but the spark of life within him is curiously separable from himself now, and they have a deep interest in it, probably because it IS life, and they are living and must die.”
Source: Our Mutual Friend: Easyread Edition
“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.”
Source: The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Other Stories
“"My good fellow," retorted Mr. Boffin, "you have my word; and how you can have that, without my honour too, I don't know. I've sorted a lot of dust in my time, but I never knew the two things go into separate heaps."”
Source: Our Mutual Friend: Easyread Comfort Edition
“Surprises, like misfortunes, seldom come alone.”
Source: Oliver Twist
“Don't you think that any secret course is an unworthy one?”
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].
“I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed.”
Source: The Personal History of David Copperfield ... With Frontispiece by H. K. Browne
“"As I think I told you once before," said I, "it is you who have been, in your greed and cunning, against all the world. It may be profitable to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death."”
Source: The Personal History of David Copperfield
“It's not put into his head to be buried. It's put into his head to be made useful. You hold your life on the condition that to the last you shall struggle hard for it. Every man holds a discovery on the same terms.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)
“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
“The worst class of sum worked in the every-day world is cyphered by the diseased arithmeticians who are always in the rule of Subtraction as to the merits and successes of others, and never in Addition as to their own.”
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].
“To bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted delights; and there is no playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game, without growing the worse for it.”
Source: A Cyclopedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens
“When I have heard him talking to Papa during the sittings for the picture, I have sat wondering whether it could be that he has no belief in anybody else, because he has no belief in himself.”
Source: The Works of Charles Dickens: Little Dorrit
“"O, Mrs. Clennam, Mrs. Clennam," said Little Dorrit, "angry feelings and unforgiving deeds are no comfort and no guide to you and me."”
Source: LITTLE DORRIT
“Affery, like greater people, had always been right in her facts, and always wrong in the theories she deduced from them.”
Source: LITTLE DORRIT
