Charles Dickens Quotes

“Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.”

“Nothing of what is nobly done is ever lost.”

“My guiding star always is, Get hold of portable property.”

“He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own lone quite path-for him. ~ Stephen speaking of Rachael”

“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.”

“Possibly we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the morning, and took off our coats to the work.”

“A boy's story is the best that is ever told.”

“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.”

“Don't you think that any secret course is an unworthy one?”

“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.”

“An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.”

“Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.”

“If you could see my legs when I take my boots off, you'd form some idea of what unrequited affection is.”

“Most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.”

“My hair stands on end at the cost and charges of these boys. Why was I ever a father! Why was my father ever a father!”

“Around and around the house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow.”

“And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.”

“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.”

“Don't be afraid! We won't make an author of you, while there's an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.”

“Your voice and music are the same to me.”

“I wear the chains I forged in life.”

“Walk and be Happy, Walk and be Healthy.”

“There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.”

“When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!”

“As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above", I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.”