Charles Dickens quotes - page 18

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. (Charles Dickens)
With affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other. View quote
Charles Dickens
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other wayin short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. View quote
Charles Dickens
Compeyson's business was the swindling, hand writing forging, stolen bank-note passing, and such-like. All sorts of traps as Compeyson could set with his head, and keep his own legs out of and get the profits from and let another man in for, was Compeyson's business. He'd no more heart than a iron file he was as cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil afore mentioned. View quote
Charles Dickens
All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew. View quote
Charles Dickens
It is strange with how little notice, good, bad, or indifferent, a man may live and die in London. View quote
Charles Dickens
Mr. Augustus Minns was a bachelor, of about forty as he said - of about eight-and-forty as his friends said. View quote
Charles Dickens
Love is not a feeling to pass away, Like the balmy breath of a summer day; It is not - it cannot be - laid aside; It is not a thing to forget or hide. View quote
Charles Dickens
He was not unamiable, but he could at any time have viewed the execution of a dog, or the assassination of an infant, with the liveliest satisfaction. Their habits were at variance with his love of order; and his love of order, was as powerful as his love of life. View quote
Charles Dickens
I put a New Testament among your books, for the very same reasons, and with the very same hopes that made me write an easy account of it for you, when you were a little child; because it is the best book that ever was or will be known in the world. View quote
Charles Dickens
In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. (Charles Dickens)
Well, every one for himself, and Providence for us all--as the elephant said when he danced among the chickens. View quote
Charles Dickens
I had been to see Macbeth at the theatre a night or two before and she reminded me of the faces rising out of the witches' cauldron. View quote
Charles Dickens
The expression of a man's face is commonly a help to his thoughts, or glossary on his speech but the countenance of Newman Noggs, in his ordinary moods, was a problem which no stretch of ingenuity could solve. View quote
Charles Dickens
The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together, and to rest in her bosom. View quote
Charles Dickens
A demd, damp, moist, unpleasant body. View quote
Charles Dickens
Day was breaking at Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. Stars were yet visible, but there was dull light in the east that was not the light of night. The moon had gone down, and a mist crept along the banks of the river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water was the ghost of water. This earth looked spectral, and so did the pale stars while the cold eastern glare, expressionless as to heat or colour, with the eye of the firmament quenched, might have been likened to the stare of the dead. View quote
Charles Dickens
A moment, and its glory was no more. The sun went down beneath the long dark lines of hill and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement the light was all withdrawn the shining church turned cold and dark the stream forgot to smile the birds were silent and the gloom of winter dwelt on everything. View quote
Charles Dickens
The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire. View quote
Charles Dickens
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. View quote
Charles Dickens
While the flowers, pale and unreal in the moonlight, floated away upon the river and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the eternal seas. (Charles Dickens)
But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round...as a good time a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely. View quote
Charles Dickens
If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world's end without fear. I can give up nothing for you - I have nothing to resign, and no one to forsake but all my love and life shall be devoted to you, and with my last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense and memory left. View quote
Charles Dickens
Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman . . . View quote
Charles Dickens
I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuadinig arguments of my best friends. View quote
Charles Dickens