Top 500 Charles Dickens Quotes (2023 Update)
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251. “A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!” Which all the family re-echoed. “God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.”

— Charles Dickens

252. “Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures, hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?”

— Charles Dickens

253. “Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows – and china.”

— Charles Dickens

254. “What are the odds so long as the fire of the soul is kindled at the taper of conviviality, and the wing of friendship never molts a feather?”

— Charles Dickens

255. “When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded places full of life.”

— Charles Dickens

256. “The last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck.”

— Charles Dickens

257. “Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.”

— Charles Dickens

258. “Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

— Charles Dickens

259. “There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.”

— Charles Dickens

260. “The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

262. “In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is – as the light called human life is – at its coming and its going.”

— Charles Dickens

263. “In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.”

— Charles Dickens

264. “Stranger, pause and ask thyself the question, Canst thou do likewise? If not, with a blush retire.”

— Charles Dickens

265. “Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!”

— Charles Dickens

266. “I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything.”

— Charles Dickens

267. “You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. Stick to Facts, sir!”

— Charles Dickens

268. “True love believes everything, and bears everything, and trusts everything.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

270. “Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. 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!”

— Charles Dickens

271. “I have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can’t beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry it.”

— Charles Dickens

272. “I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.”

— Charles Dickens

273. “Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.”

— Charles Dickens

274. “Circumstances beyond my individual control.”

— Charles Dickens

275. “Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?” Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood. “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!”

— Charles Dickens

276. “Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.”

— Charles Dickens

277. “There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”

— Charles Dickens

278. “Dumb as a drum vith a hole in it, sir.”

— Charles Dickens

279. “I am not old, but my young way was never the way to age.”

— Charles Dickens

280. “My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.”

— Charles Dickens

281. “Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.”

— Charles Dickens

282. “There is no such passion in human nature, as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen.”

— Charles Dickens

283. “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

284. “It is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded.”

— Charles Dickens

285. “I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man’s opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures; or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music.”

— Charles Dickens

286. “The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.”

— Charles Dickens

287. “The more man knows of man, the better for the common brotherhood among men.”

— Charles Dickens

288. “Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.”

— Charles Dickens

289. “All of us have wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.”

— Charles Dickens

290. “I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt, and, of course, if it ceased to beat, I would cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no – sympathy – sentiment – nonsense.”

— Charles Dickens

291. “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. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”

— Charles Dickens

292. “The cramped monotony of my existence grinds me away by the grain.”

— Charles Dickens

293. “Yes. He is quite a good fellow – nobody’s enemy but his own.”

— Charles Dickens

294. “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.”

— Charles Dickens

295. “It was very dark; but in the murky sky there were masses of cloud which shone with a lurid light, like monstrous heaps of copper that had been heated in a furnace, and were growing cold.”

— Charles Dickens

296. “It is required of every man,” the ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.”

— Charles Dickens

297. “Lawyers hold that there are two kinds of particularly bad witnesses – a reluctant witness, and a too-willing witness.”

— Charles Dickens

298. “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.”

— Charles Dickens

299. “I verily believe that her not remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly – and that is the sharpest crying of all.”

— Charles Dickens

300. “I don’t know what day of the month it is!” said Scrooge. “I don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop!”

— Charles Dickens