Top 1041 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Dickens - Page 4

I wear the chain I forged in life....I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.

You touch some of the reasons for my going, not for my staying away.

Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen.

Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see triumph.

The habit of paying compliments kept a man's tongue oiled without any expense.

For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.

Money and goods are certainly the best of references.

Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

There is nothing--no, nothing--innocent or good, that dies and is forgotten; let us hold to that faith or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in the cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those that loved it, and play its part through them in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes or drowned in the deep sea.

On the eve of long voyages or an absence of many years, friends who are tenderly attached will seperate with the usual look, the usual pressure of the hand, planning one final interview for the morrow, while each well knows that it is but a poor feint to save the pain of uttering that one word, and the meeting will never be. Should possibilities be worse to bear than certainties?

He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been, in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away, by the fervour of this reproach.

In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease--a terrible passing inclination to die of it.

Tongue; well that's a wery good thing when it an't a woman.

Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.

Ride on! Ride on over all obstacles and win the race.

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.

For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.

The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world.

Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman.

The sum of the whole is this: walk and b« happy! walk and be healthy. The best of all ways to lengthen ourdays, is notas Mr. Thomas Moore has it, " ]To steal a few hours from night, my love;" but with leave, be it spoken, to walk steadily and with a purpose.

I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished.

... what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.

There are chords in the human heart- strange, varying strings- which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.

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.

Spite is a little word, but it represents as strange a jumble of feelings and compound of discords, as any polysyllable in the language.

The sun,--the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man--burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.

Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.

And this is the eternal law. For, Evil often stops short at istelf and dies with the doer of it! but Good, never.

Sudden shifts and changes are no bad preparation for political life.

Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

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.

Of all bad listeners, the worst and most terrible to encounter is the man who is so fond of listening that he wishes to hear, not only your conversation, but that of every other person in the room.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

Change begets change.

But, tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble's soul; his heart was waterproof.

The night crept on apace, the moon went down, the stars grew pale and dim, and morning, cold as they, slowly approached. Then, from behind a distant hill, the noble sun rose up, driving the mists in phantom shapes before it, and clearing the earth of their ghostly forms till darkness came again.

Never imitate the eccentricities of genius, but toil after it in its truer flights. They are not so easy to follow, but they lead to higher regions.

A good thing can't be cruel.

Trifles make the sum of life.

Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.

May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us? That we may forgive it.

On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels . . .

I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.

The forces that affect our lives, the influences that mold and shape us, are often like whispers in a different room, teasingly indistinct, apprehended only with difficulty.

We must scrunch or be scrunched.

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 respect a rather common one.

How beautiful you are! You are more beautiful in anger than in repose. I don't ask you for your love; give me yourself and your hatred; give me yourself and that pretty rage; give me yourself and that enchanting scorn; it will be enough for me.

It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.

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.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

things cannot be expected to turn up of themselves. We must in a measure assist to turn them up

The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far we are pursued by nothing else.

But the mere truth won't do. You must have a lawyer.

Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.

Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.

There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.

If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish.

So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.

I find my breath gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as it comes, and make the most of it. That's the best way, ain't it?