Top 500 Charles Dickens Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

306. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

309. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

312. “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

313. “There never was such a goose.”

— Charles Dickens

314. “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

315. “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

316. “You should keep dogs-fine animals-sagacious.”

— Charles Dickens

317. “Veels vithin veels, a prison in a prison.”

— Charles Dickens

318. “The habit of paying compliments kept a man’s tongue oiled without any expense.”

— Charles Dickens

319. “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

320. “Among the mighty store of wonderful chains that are for ever forging, day and night, in the cast iron-works of time and circumstance, there was one chain forged in the moment of that small conclusion, riveted to the foundations of heaven and earth, and gifted with invincible force to hold and drag.”

— Charles Dickens

321. “They are so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a water-closet doormat.”

— Charles Dickens

322. “May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us? That we may forgive it.”

— Charles Dickens

323. “The privileges of the side-table included the small prerogatives of sitting next to the toast, and taking two cups of tea to other people’s one.”

— Charles Dickens

324. “It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott.”

— Charles Dickens

325. “The plain rule is to do nothing in the dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never to put his foot where he cannot see the ground.”

— Charles Dickens

326. “Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It’s so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.”

— Charles Dickens

327. “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. 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!”

— Charles Dickens

328. “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.”

— Charles Dickens

329. “Ten minutes, good, past eleven.” “My blood!” ejaculated the vexed coachman, “and not atop of Shooter’s yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!” The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed.”

— Charles Dickens

330. “The wine-shops breed, in physical atmosphere of malaria and a moral pestilence of envy and vengeance, the men of crime and revolution.”

— Charles Dickens

331. “Let me feel now what sharp distress I may.”

— Charles Dickens

332. “No one is useless in this world,′ retorted the Secretary, ’who lightens the burden of it for any one else.”

— Charles Dickens

333. “In this round world of many circles within circles, do we make a weary journey from the high grade to the low, to find at last that they lie close together, that the two extremes touch, and that our journey’s end is but our starting-place?”

— Charles Dickens

334. “I ate ’umble pie with an appetite.”

— Charles Dickens

335. “Have I yet to learn that the hardest and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any earthly record, and are suffered every day!”

— Charles Dickens

336. “If great criminals told the truth – which, being great criminals, they do not – they would very rarely tell of their struggles against the crime. Their struggles are towards it. They buffet with opposing waves, to gain the bloody shore, not to recede from it.”

— Charles Dickens

337. “Mr. and Mrs. Boffin sat staring at mid-air, and Mrs. Wilfer sat silently giving them to understand that every breath she drew required to be drawn with a self-denial rarely paralleled in history.”

— Charles Dickens

338. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen 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!”

— Charles Dickens

339. “Let no man talk of murderers escaping justice, and hint that providence must sleep.”

— Charles Dickens

340. “All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one.”

— Charles Dickens

341. “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.”

— Charles Dickens

342. “It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. “It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

— Charles Dickens

343. “I believe the spreading of Catholicism to be the most horrible means of political and social degradation left in the world.”

— Charles Dickens

344. “Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: What then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

— Charles Dickens

345. “Death is nature’s remedy for all things.”

— Charles Dickens

346. “It is one of the easiest achievements in life to offend your family when your family want to get rid of you.”

— Charles Dickens

347. “She indulged in melancholy, that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries...”

— Charles Dickens

348. “In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting.”

— Charles Dickens

349. “For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now, a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years, but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.”

— Charles Dickens

350. “Every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.”

— Charles Dickens