Charles Dickens quotes - page 13

If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. (Charles Dickens)
Philosophers are only men in armor after all. View quote
Charles Dickens
And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world. View quote
Charles Dickens
Skewered through and through with office pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape. View quote
Charles Dickens
Every man, however obscure, however far removed from the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for good, and impressible for evil, and it is in the nature of things that he cannot really improve himself without in some degree improving other men. View quote
Charles Dickens
Night, like a giant, fills the church, from pavement to roof, and holds dominion through the silent hours. Pale dawn again comes peeping through the windows and, giving place to day, sees night withdraw into the vaults, and follows it, and drives it out, and hides among the dead. View quote
Charles Dickens
The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. View quote
Charles Dickens
I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it. View quote
Charles Dickens
Circumstances beyond my individual control. View quote
Charles Dickens
Black are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead. View quote
Charles Dickens
All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition of their mystery the dust lies piled upon the shore the sea-birds soar and hover the winds and clouds go forth upon their trackless flight the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. (Charles Dickens)
The beating of my heart was so violent and wild that I felt as if my life were breaking from me. View quote
Charles Dickens
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. View quote
Charles Dickens
Mrs. Boffin, insisting that Bella should make tomorrow's expedition in the chariot, she went home in great grandeur. Mrs. Wilfer and Miss Lavinia had speculated much on the probabilities and improbabilities of her coming in this gorgeous state, and, on beholding the chariot from the window at which they were secreted to look out for it, agreed that it must be detained at the door as long as possible, for the mortification and confusion of the neighbours. View quote
Charles Dickens
The great commander, who seemed by expression of his visage to be always on the look-out for something in the extremest distance, and to have no ocular knowledge of anything within ten miles, made no reply whatever. View quote
Charles Dickens
The sergeant was describing a military life. It was all drinking, he said, except that there were frequent intervals of eating and love making. View quote
Charles Dickens
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. View quote
Charles Dickens
Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world. View quote
Charles Dickens
It is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded. View quote
Charles Dickens
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. View quote
Charles Dickens
There either is or is not, that's the way things are. The colour of the day. The way it felt to be a child. The saltwater on your sunburnt legs. Sometimes the water is yellow, sometimes it's red. But what colour it may be in memory, depends on the day. I'm not going to tell you the story the way it happened. I'm going to tell it the way I remember it. (Charles Dickens)
Come in, -- come in! and know me better, man! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me! You have never seen the like of me before! View quote
Charles Dickens
Surprises, like misfortunes, seldom come alone. View quote
Charles Dickens
I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry--I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart--God knows what its name was--that tears started to my eyes. View quote
Charles Dickens
Gold, for the instant, lost its lustre in his eyes, for there were countless treasures of the heart which it could never purchase. View quote
Charles Dickens