Charles Dickens

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Charles Dickens, British author

Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 - 9 June 1870) was a British writer and novelist.

See also A Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist

1 Sourced
2 Attributed
3 External links

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Sourced

A smattering of everything, and a knowledge of nothing.
- Sketches by Boz, Tales, ch. 3 (1836-1837)

O let us love our occupations,
Bless the squire and his relations,
Live upon our daily rations,
And always know our proper stations.
- The Chimes, second quarter (1844)

La difficulté d'écrire l'anglais m'est extrêmement ennuyeuse. Ah, mon Dieu ! si l'on pouvait toujours écrire cette belle langue de France!
- Translation: The difficulty of writing English is most tiresome to me. My God! If only we could write this beautiful language of France at all times!
- Letter to John Foster (July 7, 1850)

Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine...
- The Signal-Man [1] (1866)

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Pickwick Papers (1836)

He had used the word [humbug] in its Pickwickian sense.
- Ch. 1

"I am ruminating," said Mr. Pickwick, "on the strange mutability of human affairs." "Ah! I see—in at the palace door one day, out at the window the next. Philosopher, Sir?" "An observer of human nature, Sir," said Mr. Pickwick. "Ah, so am I. Most people are when they've little to do and less to get."
- Ch. 2

Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
- Ch. 2

"It wasn't the wine," murmured Mr. Snodgrass, in a broken voice. "It was the salmon."
- Ch. 8

I wants to make your flesh creep.
- Ch. 8

Can I view thee panting, lying
On thy stomach, without sighing;
Can I unmoved see thee dying
On a log
Expiring frog!
- Ch. 15

Tongue—, well that's a wery good thing when it ain't a woman's.
- Ch. 19

Mr. Weller's knowledge of London was extensive and peculiar.
- Ch. 20

I took a good deal o' pains with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was wery young, and shift for hisself. It's the only way to make a boy sharp, sir.
- Ch. 20

Be wery careful o' vidders all your life.
- Ch. 20

"Think, Sir!" replied Mr. Weller; "why, I think he's the wictim o' connubiality, as Blue Beard's domestic chaplain said, vith a tear of pity, ven he buried him."
- Ch. 20

Dumb as a drum vith a hole in it, sir.
- Ch. 25

"Eccentricities of genius, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick. "You may retire."
- Ch. 30

Keep yourself to yourself.
- Ch. 32

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on Boxin'-Day, or Warren's blackin', or Rowland's oil, or some of them low fellows; never you let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy.
- Ch. 33

Never mind the character, stick to the alleybi.
- Ch. 33

She knows wot's wot, she does.
- Ch. 37

They don't mind it; it's a regular holiday to them—all porter and skittles.
- Ch. 41

Anythin' for a quiet life, as the man said wen he took the sitivation at the lighthouse.
- Ch. 43

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Oliver Twist (1837-1839)

Please, sir, I want some more.
- Ch. 2

Oliver Twist has asked for more!
- Ch. 2

There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.
- Ch. 10

I only know two sorts of boys. Mealy boys, and beef-faced boys.
- Ch. 10

But death, fires, and burglary, make all men equals...
- Ch. 28

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.
- Ch. 37

"If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass—a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience."
- Ch. 51

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Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839)

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.
- Ch. 3

He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two.
- Ch. 4

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.
- Ch. 5

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.
- Ch. 10

Oh! they're too beautiful to live, much too beautiful!
- Ch. 14

I pity his ignorance and despise him.
- Ch. 15

How can you capture the sympathies of the audience unless you have a small man, fighting against a bigger one?
- Ch. 22

"The unities, sir," he said, "are a completeness—a kind of universal dovetailedness with regard to place and time—a sort of a general oneness, if I may be allowed to use so strong an expression.
- Ch. 24

It is a hopeless endeavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in.
- Ch. 30

She is sitting there before me. There is the graceful outline of her form; it cannot be mistaken—there is nothing like it. The two countesses had no outlines at all, and the dowager's was a demd outline. Why is she so excruciatingly beautiful that I cannot be angry with her, even now?
- Ch. 34

...young men not being as a class remarkable for modesty or self-denial, especially when there is a lady in the case, when, if they colour at all, it is rather their practise to colour the story, and not themselves.
- Ch. 43

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues--faith and hope.
- Ch. 43

There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.
- Ch. 44

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.
- Ch. 49

When men are about to commit, or sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable.
- Ch. 54

Look to yourself, and heed this warning that I give you! Your day is past, and night is coming on.
- Ch. 54

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The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)

What is the odds so long as the fire of soul is kindled at the taper of conwiviality, and the wing of friendship never moults a feather! What is the odds so long as the spirit is expanded by means of rosy wine, and the present moment is the least happiest of our existence!
- Ch. 2

She's the ornament of her sex.
- Ch. 5

In love of home, the love of country has its rise.
- Ch. 38

That vague kind of penitence which holidays awaken next morning.
- Ch. 40

"Did you ever taste beer?" "I had a sip of it once," said the small servant. "Here's a state of things!" cried Mr Swiveller, raising his eyes to the ceiling. "She never tasted it—it can't be tasted in a sip!"
- Ch. 57

You will not have forgotten that it was a maxim with Foxey—our revered father, gentlemen—"Always suspect everybody." That's the maxim to go through life with!
- Ch. 66

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Barnaby Rudge (1841)

And you'd find your father rather a tough customer in argeyment, Joe, if anybody was to try and tackle him.
- Ch. 1

Whether they were right or wrong in this conjecture, certain it is that minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort, and like them, are often successfully cured by remedies in themselves very nauseous and unpalatable.
- Ch. 7

"There are strings," said Mr Tappertit, flourishing his bread-and- cheese knife in the air, "in the human heart that had better not be wibrated. That's what's the matter."
- Ch. 22

Oh gracious, why wasn't I born old and ugly?
- Ch. 70

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Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844)

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There an't much credit in that. If I was very ragged and very jolly, then I should begin to feel I had gained a point, Mr Pinch.
- Ch. 5

With affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.
- Ch. 8

"Do not repine, my friends," said Mr. Pecksniff, tenderly. "Do not weep for me. It is chronic." And with these words, after making a futile attempt to pull off his shoes, he fell into the fireplace.
- Ch. 9

Keep up appearances whatever you do.
- Ch. 11

Here's the rule for bargains--'Do other men, for they would do you.' That's the true business precept.
- Ch. 11

Buy an annuity cheap, and make your life interesting to yourself and everybody else that watches the speculation.
- Ch. 18

Leave the bottle on the chimley-piece, and don't ask me to take none, but let me put my lips to it when I am so dispoged, and then I will do what I'm engaged to do, according to the best of my ability.
- Ch. 19

Rich folks may ride on camels, but it an't so easy for 'em to see out of a needle's eye. That is my comfort, and I hope I knows it.
- Ch. 25

"I'll tell you what, my dear," he observed, when Mrs Gamp had at last withdrawn and shut the door, "that's a ve-ry shrewd woman. That's a woman whose intellect is immensely superior to her station in life. That's a woman who observes and reflects in an uncommon manner. She's the sort of woman now," said Mould, drawing his silk handkerchief over his head again, and composing himself for a nap "one would almost feel disposed to bury for nothing; and do it neatly, too!"
- Ch. 25

He'd make a lovely corpse.
- Ch. 25

Our fellow-countryman is a model of a man, quite fresh from Natur's mold!
- Ch. 34

"I could have bore it with a thankful art. But the words she spoke of Mrs Harris, lambs could not forgive. No, Betsey!" said Mrs Gamp, in a violent burst of feeling, "nor worms forget!"
- Ch. 49

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A Christmas Carol (1843)

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me.
- Introduction

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
- Stave 1

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
- Stave 1

"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"
- Stave 1
I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest license of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value
- Stave 1

"Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough." "Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough."
- Stave 1

"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?" "I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "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."
- Stave 1

"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world —oh, woe is me! —and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"
- Stave 1

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
- Stave 1

"Who, and what are you?" Scrooge demanded. "I am the Ghost of Christmas Past." "Long Past?" inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish stature. "No. Your past."
- Stave 2

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile.
- Stave 2

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit. "Look upon me!"
- Stave 3

"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."
- Stave 3

"Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die. It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God. to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust."
- Stave 3

"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?" said Scrooge. The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand. "You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us," Scrooge pursued. "Is that so, Spirit?" The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.
- Stave 4

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,' said Scrooge. 'But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me."
- Stave 4

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.
- Stave 4

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
- Stave 5

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Dombey and Son (1848)

He's tough, ma'am, tough, is J.B. Tough and devilish sly!
- Ch. 7

"I want to know what it says," he answered, looking steadily in her face. "The sea Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?"
- Ch. 8

"Wal'r, my boy," replied the Captain, "in the Proverbs of Solomon you will find the following words, "May we never want a friend in need, nor a bottle to give him!" When found, make a note of."
- Ch. 15

Cows are my passion.
- Ch. 21

The bearings of this observation lays in the application on it.
- Ch. 23

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David Copperfield (1849-1850)

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
- Ch. 1

You'll find us rough, sir, but you'll find us ready.
- Ch. 3

Ye-es. Barkis is willin'.
- Ch. 5

When I lived at home with papa and mama, I really should have hardly understood what the word meant, in the sense in which I now employ it, but experientia does it, - as papa used to say.
- Ch. 11

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and - and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!
- Ch. 12

It's a mad world. Mad as Bedlam, boy!
- Ch. 14

Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made that mistake of putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it was taken off, into mine?
- Ch. 14

"Never," said my aunt, "be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you."
- Ch. 15

"It was as true," said Mr. Barkis, "as turnips is. It was as true," said Mr. Barkis, nodding his nightcap, which was his only means of emphasis, "as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them."
- Ch. 21

What a world of gammon and spinach it is, though, ain't it!
- Ch. 22

He is quite a good fellow - nobody's enemy but his own.
- Ch. 25

Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families.
- Ch. 28

Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!
- Ch. 28

A long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether, my hearties, hurrah!
- Ch. 30

I ate umble pie with an appetite.
- Ch. 39

Let sleeping dogs lie - who wants to rouse 'em?
- Ch. 39

Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape.
- Ch. 43

There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.
- Ch. 45

A man must take the fat with the lean.
- Ch. 51

Trifles make the sum of life.
- Ch. 53

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Bleak House (1852-1853)

He is a gentleman of strict conscience, disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on the shortest notice to die any death you may please to mention rather than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.
- Ch. 2

"Oh, dear no, miss," he said. "This is a London particular." I had never heard of such a thing. "A fog, miss," said the young gentleman. "Oh, indeed!" said I.
- Ch. 3

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!
- Ch. 6

Not to put too fine a point on it.
- Ch. 11

He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the world but a model of deportment.
- Ch. 14

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Hard Times (1854)

Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.
- Bk. I, Ch. 1

Oh my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh my friends and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an ironhanded and a grinding despotism! Oh my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!
- Bk. I, Ch. 4

There is a wisdom of the Head, and ...there is a wisdom of the Heart.
- Bk. III, Ch. 1

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Little Dorrit (1857-1858)

I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced, had no existence.
- Bk. I, Ch. 2

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office.
- Bk. I, Ch. 10

Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving--HOW NOT TO DO IT.
- Bk. I, Ch. 10

"Papa is a preferable mode of address," observed Mrs General. "Father is rather vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism. You will find it serviceable, in the formation of a demeanour, if you sometimes say to yourself in company— on entering a room, for instance—Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, prunes and prism.
- Bk. II, Ch. 5

Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.
- Bk. II, Ch. 28

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A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
- Bk. I, Ch. 1

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
- Bk. I, Ch. 3

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
- Bk. III, Ch. 15

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Great Expectations (1860-1861)

Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than the dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by religion.
- Ch. 4

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.
- Ch. 9

My guiding star always is, Get hold of portable property.
- Ch. 24

Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people we most despise.
- Ch. 27

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.
- Ch. 39

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.
Ch. 40

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Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865)

Money and goods are certainly the best of references.
- Bk. I, Ch. 4

Professionally he declines and falls, and as a friend he drops into poetry.
- Bk. I, Ch. 5

I want to be something so much worthier than the doll in the doll's house.
- Bk. I, Ch. 55

I don't care whether I am a Minx or a Sphinx.
- Bk. II, Ch. 8

That's the state to live and die in!...R-r-rich!
- Bk. III, Ch. 5

We must scrunch or be scrunched.
- Bk. III, Ch. 5

'No one is useless in this world,' retorted the Secretary, 'who lightens the burden of it for any one else.'
- Bk. III, Ch. 9

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Attributed

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.

A lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper - a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match.

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.

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.

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 subject at a time.

I only ask for information.

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.

It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some.

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

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

The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.

The sergeant was describing a military life. It was all drinking, he said, except that there were frequent intervals of eating and love making.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

There might be some credit in being jolly.

This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.

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