"And I am quite serious when I..." - Quote by Charles Dickens

“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.”

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

“I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you[for helping me]. I almost feel as if You ought to be grateful to ME, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. . . I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by giving you an opportunity of assisting me.”

“If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.”

“It is more often from pride than from defective understanding that people oppose established opinions: they find the best places taken in the good party and are reluctant to accept inferior ones.”

“No wise man has called a change of opinion in constancy.”

“Unmerited abuse wounds, while unmerited praise has not the power to heal.”

“Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive.”

“You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.”