Top 500 Charles Dickens Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones.”

— Charles Dickens

402. “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

— Charles Dickens

403. “At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be.”

— Charles Dickens

404. “My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the people governed is, on the whole, illimitable.”

— Charles Dickens

405. “When the wind is blowing and the sleet or rain is driving against the dark windows, I love to sit by the fire, thinking of what I have read in books of voyage and travel.”

— Charles Dickens

406. “Whatsume’er the failings on his part, Remember reader he were that good in his hart.”

— Charles Dickens

407. “Your voice and music are the same to me.”

— Charles Dickens

408. “For the night-wind has a dismal trick of wandering round and round a building of that sort, and moaning as it goes; and of trying, with its unseen hand, the windows and the doors; and seeking out some crevices by which to enter.”

— Charles Dickens

409. “In London, he had expected neither to walk on pavements of gold, nor to lie on beds of roses; if he had had any such exalted expectation, he would not have prospered. He had expected labour, and he found it, and did it and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity consisted.”

— Charles Dickens

410. “I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in consequence.”

— Charles Dickens

411. “God bless us every one! said Tiny Tim, the last of all.”

— Charles Dickens

412. “You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles Darnay.”

— Charles Dickens

413. “To close the eyes, and give a seemly comfort to the apparel of the dead, is poverty’s holiest touch of nature.”

— Charles Dickens

414. “We are friends,” said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose from the bench. “And will continue friends apart,” said Estella. 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

415. “Let us leave our old friend in one of those moments of unmixed happiness which, if we seek them, there are ever some, to cheer our transitory existence here. There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.”

— Charles Dickens

416. “Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations.”

— Charles Dickens

417. “There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands.”

— Charles Dickens

418. “Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again.”

— Charles Dickens

419. “Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen.”

— Charles Dickens

420. “Of all bad listeners, the worst and most terrible to encounter is the man who is so fond of listening that he wishes to hear, not only your conversation, but that of every other person in the room.”

— Charles Dickens

421. “I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!”

— Charles Dickens

422. “I never see any difference in boys. I only know two sorts of boys. Mealy boys and beef-faced boys.”

— Charles Dickens

423. “Scattered wits take a long time in picking up.”

— Charles Dickens

424. “Gold, for the instant, lost its luster in his eyes, for there were countless treasures of the heart which it could never purchase.”

— Charles Dickens

425. “There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being waterproof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker’s. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time.”

— Charles Dickens

426. “She had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very good.”

— Charles Dickens

427. “Some women’s faces are, in their brightness, a prophecy; and some, in their sadness, a history.”

— Charles Dickens

428. “Foul weather didn’t know where to have him.”

— Charles Dickens

429. “What an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world!”

— Charles Dickens

430. “Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.”

— Charles Dickens

431. “This is a world of action, and not moping and droning in.”

— Charles Dickens

432. “The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance.”

— Charles Dickens

433. “I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.”

— Charles Dickens

434. “Hay que tomar las cosas como vienen; eso es lo que tenemos que hacer en esta vida.”

— Charles Dickens

435. “It is well for a man to respect his own vocation whatever it is and to think himself bound to uphold it and to claim for it the respect it deserves.”

— Charles Dickens

436. “Their demeanor is invariably morose, sullen, clownish and repulsive. I should think there is not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute of humor, vivacity, or the capacity for enjoyment.”

— Charles Dickens

437. “My guiding star always is, Get hold of portable property.”

— Charles Dickens

438. “I want to escape from myself. For when I do start up and stare myself seedily in the face, as happens to be my case at present, my blankness is inconceivable – indescribable – my misery amazing.”

— Charles Dickens

439. “Come, let’s be a comfortable couple and take care of each other! How glad we shall be, that we have somebody we are fond of always, to talk to and sit with.”

— Charles Dickens

440. “Nobody near me here, but rats, and they are fine stealthy secret fellows.”

— Charles Dickens

441. “We lawyers are always curious, always inquisitive, always picking up odds and ends for our patchwork minds, since there is no knowing when and where they may fit into some corner.”

— Charles Dickens

442. “The worst of all listeners is the man who does nothing but listen.”

— Charles Dickens

443. “Hallo! A great deal of steam! the pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that. That was the pudding.”

— Charles Dickens

444. “Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions.”

— Charles Dickens

445. “Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.”

— Charles Dickens

446. “We are so very ’umble.”

— Charles Dickens

447. “There is something in sickness that breaks down the pride of manhood.”

— Charles Dickens

448. “From the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen latitudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one way Charles Darnay’s way the way of the love of a woman.”

— Charles Dickens

449. “Joe gave me some more gravy.”

— Charles Dickens

450. “Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.”

— Charles Dickens