Charles Dickens Quotes
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401. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

403. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

405. “Prowling about the rooms, sitting down, getting up, stirring the fire, looking out the window, teasing my hair, sitting down to write, writing nothing, writing something and tearing it up...”

— Charles Dickens

406. “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

407. “To do a great right, you may do a little wrong; and you may take any means which the end to be attained will justify.”

— Charles Dickens

408. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

410. “I think it must somewhere be written that the virtues of mothers shall be visited on their children, as well as the sins of their fathers.”

— Charles Dickens

411. “Dear reader! It rests with you and me whether, in our two fields of action, similar things shall be or not. Let them be! We shall sit with lighter bosoms on the hearth, to see the ashes of our fires turn grey and cold.”

— Charles Dickens

412. “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

413. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

415. “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

416. “I have heard it said that as we keep our birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of dead people, who are not easy in their graves, keep the day they died upon.”

— Charles Dickens

417. “Joe gave me some more gravy.”

— Charles Dickens

418. “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

419. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

422. “I never had one hour’s happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.”

— Charles Dickens

423. “Mystery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries.”

— Charles Dickens

424. “We are so very ’umble.”

— Charles Dickens

425. “When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

428. “There might be some credit in being jolly.”

— Charles Dickens

429. “Polly put the kettle on, we’ll all have tea.”

— Charles Dickens

430. “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

431. “There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none.”

— Charles Dickens

432. “Rich folks may ride on camels, but it ain’t so easy for ’em to see out of a needle’s eye.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

434. “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

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

— Charles Dickens

436. “Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art.”

— Charles Dickens

437. “Sudden shifts and changes are no bad preparation for political life.”

— Charles Dickens

438. “The sergeant was describing a military life. It was all drinking, he said, except that there were frequent intervals of eating and love making.”

— Charles Dickens

439. “Mr Lorry asks the witness questions: Ever been kicked? Might have been. Frequently? No. Ever kicked down stairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick at the top of a staircase, and fell down stairs of his own accord.”

— Charles Dickens

440. “In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.”

— Charles Dickens

441. “He was by no means opposed to hard labour on principle, for he would work away at a cricket-match by the day together, – running, and catching, and batting, and bowling, and revelling in toil which would exhaust a galley-slave.”

— Charles Dickens

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

— Charles Dickens

443. “I admire machinery as much is any man, and am as thankful to it as any man can be for what it does for us. But it will never be a substitute for the face of a man, with his soul in it, encouraging another man to be brave and true.”

— Charles Dickens

444. “Battledore and shuttlecock’s a wery good game, vhen you an’t the shuttlecock and two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too exciting to be pleasant.”

— Charles Dickens

445. “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

446. “How beautiful you are! You are more beautiful in anger than in repose. I don’t ask you for your love; give me yourself and your hatred; give me yourself and that pretty rage; give me yourself and that enchanting scorn; it will be enough for me.”

— Charles Dickens

447. “Oh, a dainty plant is the ivy green, That creepeth o’er ruins old! Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the ivy green.”

— Charles Dickens

448. “A man in public life expects to be sneered at – it is the fault of his elevated situation, and not of himself.”

— Charles Dickens

449. “But, tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble’s soul; his heart was waterproof.”

— Charles Dickens

450. “An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music.”

— Charles Dickens