Charles Dickens Quotes

“If I may ride with you, Citizen Evremonde, will you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage." As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young fingers, and touched his lips. "Are you dying for him?" she whispered. "And his wife and child. Hush! Yes." "Oh, you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?" "Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.”

“Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.”

“In the majority of cases, conscience is an elastic and very flexible article”

“Although I am an old man, night is generally my time for walking.”

“Thus violent deeds live after men upon the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will survive in mournful shapes long after those who worked the desolation are but atoms of earth themselves.”

“My advice is to never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.”

“If her eyes had no expression, it was probably because they had nothing to express. If she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name or any other inscription on her face.”

“Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art.”

“Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again.”

“"Do not repine, my friends," said Mr. Pecksniff, tenderly. "Do not weep for me. It is chronic."”

“and it was not until I began to think, that I began fully to know how wrecked I was, and how the ship in which I had sailed was gone to pieces.”

“The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.”

“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 . . .”

“There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.”

“Gold, for the instant, lost its luster in his eyes, for there were countless treasures of the heart which it could never purchase”

“[S]he stood for some moments gazing at the sisters, with affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.”

“... the woman who grows up with the idea that she is simply to be an amiable animal, to be caressed and coaxed, is invariably a bitterly disappointed woman. A game of chess will cure such a conceit forever. The woman that knows the most, thinks the most, feels the most, is the most. Intellectual affection is the only lasting love. Love that has a game of chess in it can checkmate any man and solve the problem of life.”

“Opening her eyes again, and seeing her husband's face across the table, she leaned forward to give it a pat on the cheek, and sat down to supper, declaring it to be the best face in the world.”

“Joe gave me some more gravy.”

“But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat.”

“The aim of talk should be like the aim of a flying arrow -- to hit the mark; but to this end there must be a mark to hit, that is, there must be a listener.”

“The citizen ... preserved the resolute bearing of one who was not to be frowned down or daunted, and who cared very little for any nobility but that of worth and manhood.”

“A man in public life expects to be sneered at -- it is the fault of his elevated situation, and not of himself.”

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

“I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her.”