Top 500 Charles Dickens Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.”

— Charles Dickens

252. “The ocean asks for nothing but those who stand by her shores gradually attune themselves to her rhythm.”

— Charles Dickens

253. “With throbbing veins and burning skin, eyes wild and heavy, thoughts hurried and disordered, he felt as though the light were a reproach, and shrunk involuntarily from the day as if he were some foul and hideous thing.”

— Charles Dickens

254. “There seems a magic in the very name of Christmas.”

— Charles Dickens

255. “You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me.”

— Charles Dickens

256. “Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.”

— Charles Dickens

257. “Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy. -Miss Havisham.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

259. “Lord, keep my memory green.”

— Charles Dickens

260. “Friendship? Yes Please.”

— Charles Dickens

261. “In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease – a terrible passing inclination to die of it.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

263. “One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.”

— Charles Dickens

264. “Money can’t buy a happy life, or a peaceful death.”

— Charles Dickens

265. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

267. “Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.”

— Charles Dickens

268. “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

269. “I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

272. “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

273. “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

274. “Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.”

— Charles Dickens

275. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

279. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

284. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

286. “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

287. “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

288. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

290. “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

291. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

295. “Can I view thee panting, lying On thy stomach, without sighing; Can I unmoved see thee dying On a log Expiring frog!”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

297. “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

298. “Marley was dead: to begin with.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

300. “Oh God! To hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust !”

— Charles Dickens