Charles Dickens quotes - page 12

As I said just now, the world has gone past me. I don't blame it but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my stock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and am too old to catch it again. (Charles Dickens)
The dew seemed to sparkle more brightly on the green leaves the air to rustle among them with a sweeter music and the sky itself to look more blue and bright. Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercise, even over the appearance of external objects. View quote
Charles Dickens
Good never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning. View quote
Charles Dickens
Quadruped lions are said to be savage, only when they are hungry biped lions are rarely sulky longer than when their appetite for distinction remains unappeased. View quote
Charles Dickens
There might be some credit in being jolly. View quote
Charles Dickens
At last, in the dead of the night, when the street was very still indeed, Little Dorrit laid the heavy head upon her bosom, and soothed her to sleep. And thus she sat at the gate, as it were alone looking up at the stars, and seeing the clouds pass over them in their wild flight--which was the dance at Little Dorrit's party. View quote
Charles Dickens
Other sound than the owl's voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again. View quote
Charles Dickens
You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are. View quote
Charles Dickens
Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine! View quote
Charles Dickens
Please, sir, I want some more. View quote
Charles Dickens
I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude. (Charles Dickens)
It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I stopped my most unwilling hand. It is done. Nothing can undo it nothing can make it otherwise than as it was. View quote
Charles Dickens
Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh! View quote
Charles Dickens
I only ask for information. View quote
Charles Dickens
Its very pulse, if I may use the word, was like no other clock. It did not mark the flight of every moment with a gentle second stroke, as though it would check old Time, and have him stay his pace in pity, but measured it with one sledge-hammer beat, as if its business were to crush the seconds as they came trooping on, and remorselessly to clear a path before the Day of Judgment. View quote
Charles Dickens
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. View quote
Charles Dickens
I never see any difference in boys. I only know two sorts of boys. Mealy boys and beef-faced boys. View quote
Charles Dickens
An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music. View quote
Charles Dickens
If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through. Enough love might have been wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking, to drown anybody in and yet there would have remained enough within me, and all over me, to pervade my entire existence. View quote
Charles Dickens
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. View quote
Charles Dickens
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. (Charles Dickens)
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 excitin' to be pleasant. View quote
Charles Dickens
There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver. View quote
Charles Dickens
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! View quote
Charles Dickens
All through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. 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- a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away. View quote
Charles Dickens