Top 500 Charles Dickens Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “I am at the moment deaf in the ears, hoarse in the throat, red in the nose, green in the gills, damp in the eyes, twitchy in the joints and fractious in temper from a most intolerable and oppressive cold.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

103. “He did each single thing as if he did nothing else.”

— Charles Dickens

104. “There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.”

— Charles Dickens

105. “In love of home, the love of country has its rise.”

— Charles Dickens

106. “The cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.”

— Charles Dickens

107. “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.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

109. “Change begets change.”

— Charles Dickens

110. “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?”

— Charles Dickens

111. “Oh Agnes, Oh my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!”

— Charles Dickens

112. “Many merry Christmases, many happy New Years. Unbroken friendships, great accumulations of cheerful recollections and affections on earth, and heaven for us all.”

— Charles Dickens

113. “Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.”

— Charles Dickens

114. “To have a cricket on the hearth is the luckiest thing in all the world!”

— Charles Dickens

115. “The world belongs to those who set out to conquer it armed with self confidence and good humour.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

117. “A multitude of people and yet solitude.”

— Charles Dickens

118. “Trifles make the sum of life.”

— Charles Dickens

119. “When you drink of the water, don’t forget the spring from which it flows.”

— Charles Dickens

120. “Oliver Twist has asked for more!”

— Charles Dickens

121. “United metropolitan improved hot muffin and crumpet baking and punctual delivery company.”

— Charles Dickens

122. “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.”

— Charles Dickens

123. “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.”

— Charles Dickens

124. “There wasn’t room to swing a cat there.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

126. “Every failure teaches a man something, if he will but learn.”

— Charles Dickens

127. “There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind Junior.”

— Charles Dickens

128. “In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

130. “And from that hour his poor maimed spirit, only remembering the place where it had broken its wings, cancelled the dream through which it had since groped, and knew of nothing beyond the Marshalsea.”

— Charles Dickens

131. “Reflect upon your present blessings.”

— Charles Dickens

132. “Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.”

— Charles Dickens

133. “What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? O yes!”

— Charles Dickens

134. “Discipline must be maintained.”

— Charles Dickens

135. “But the mere truth won’t do. You must have a lawyer.”

— Charles Dickens

136. “Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.”

— Charles Dickens

137. “You have been the last dream of my soul.”

— Charles Dickens

138. “Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.”

— Charles Dickens

139. “They are Man’s and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

— Charles Dickens

140. “I do not know the American gentleman, God forgive me for putting two such words together.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

142. “Remember, to the last, that while there is life there is hope.”

— Charles Dickens

143. “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.”

— Charles Dickens

144. “Without strong affection, and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is mercy, and whose great attribute is benevolence to all things that breathe, true happiness can never be attained.”

— Charles Dickens

145. “Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.”

— Charles Dickens

146. “The flowers that sleep by night, opened their gentle eyes and turned them to the day. The light, creation’s mind, was everywhere, and all things owned its power.”

— Charles Dickens

147. “That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. 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.”

— Charles Dickens

148. “She writhes under her life. A woman more angry, passionate, reckless, and revengeful never lived.”

— Charles Dickens

149. “The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.”

— Charles Dickens

150. “Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it’s blowing up; and then they lengthens it out.”

— Charles Dickens