Charles Dickens famous quotes

Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her!
-- Charles Dickens

#Heart #Tears #Stronger

I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.
-- Charles Dickens

#Love #Spiritual #Truth

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.
-- Charles Dickens

#Love #Inspirational #Family

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.
-- Charles Dickens

#Love #Family #Happiness

But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round...as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely.
-- Charles Dickens

#Christmas #Heart #Men

Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.
-- Charles Dickens

#Summer #Spring #Winter

Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them.
-- Charles Dickens

#Girl #Animal #Boys

New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.
-- Charles Dickens

#Mind #Colour #New Thought

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.
-- Charles Dickens

#Heart #Men #Compassion

For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.
-- Charles Dickens

#Christmas #Children #Sometimes

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
-- Charles Dickens

#Love #Inspirational #Life

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
-- Charles Dickens

#Inspirational #Happiness #Thank You

What greater gift than the love of a cat.
-- Charles Dickens

#Cat #Animal #Humanity

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies.
-- Charles Dickens

#Freedom #Butterfly #Deny

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.
-- Charles Dickens

#Pain #Teaching #Heart

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. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me.
-- Charles Dickens

#Love #Mean #Men

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.
-- Charles Dickens

#Wisdom #Looks #Investing

A boy's story is the best that is ever told.
-- Charles Dickens

#Time #Son #Boys

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
-- Charles Dickens

#Law #People #Would Be

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
-- Charles Dickens

#Funny #Christmas #Home

There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.
-- Charles Dickens

#Strength #Encouraging #Dark

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.
-- Charles Dickens

#Sorry #Rain #Heart

My uncle, gentlemen, could say nothing; he was so very much astonished The queerest thing of all, was, that although there was such a crowd of persons, and although fresh faces were pouring in, every moment, there was no telling where they came from. They seemed to start up, in some strange manner, from the ground, or the air, and disappear in the same way.
-- Charles Dickens

#Uncles #Air #Gentleman

They enter, locking themselves in, descend the rugged steps, and are down in the Crypt. The lantern is not wanted, for the moonlight strikes in at the groined windows, bare of glass, the broken frames for which cast patterns on the ground. The heavy pillars which support the roof engender masses of black shade, but between them there are lanes of light.
-- Charles Dickens

#Light #Glasses #Broken

Do all the good you can and make as little fuss about it as possible.
-- Charles Dickens

#Life #Littles

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.
-- Charles Dickens

#Home #Doors #Umpires

I loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I loved you madly.
-- Charles Dickens

#Love #Night #Reality

Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we'd give blood.
-- Charles Dickens

#Family #Blood #Giving

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.
-- Charles Dickens

#Fall #Mind #Comfort

I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.
-- Charles Dickens

#Promise #Most Romantic #Reason

A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.
-- Charles Dickens

#Love #Dream #Men

Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.
-- Charles Dickens

#Happiness #Delight #Tricks

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.
-- Charles Dickens

#Inspirational #Laughter #Humor

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
-- Charles Dickens

#Love #Christmas #Heart

I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.
-- Charles Dickens

#Broken #Expectations #Shapes

I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything
-- Charles Dickens

#World #Surprise #Enough

There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.
-- Charles Dickens

#Plenty

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

#War #Men #Long

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.
-- Charles Dickens

#Happiness #Money #Business

You have been the last dream of my soul.
-- Charles Dickens

#Dream #Soul #Lasts

A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once won, goes through fire and water for the winner, and never changes, and is never daunted.
-- Charles Dickens

#Love #Heart #Winning

I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil.
-- Charles Dickens

#Evil #Lessons #May

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

#Flower #Memorable #Thinking

I am what you designed me to be.I am your blade. You cannot now complain if you also feel the hurt
-- Charles Dickens

#Hurt #Complaining #Blades

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money!
-- Charles Dickens

#Self #Words Of Wisdom #Crowns

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own.
-- Charles Dickens

#Nature #Giving

Accidentally consumed five biscuits when I wasn't paying attention. Those biscuits are wily fellows - they leap in like sugary ninjas
-- Charles Dickens

#Fitness #Attention #Biscuits

I will live in the past, the present, and the future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me.
-- Charles Dickens

#Past #Three #Spirit

You are in every line I have ever read.
-- Charles Dickens

#Lines

Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.
-- Charles Dickens

#Business #Soul #Prosperity

I wear the chain I forged in life....I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.
-- Charles Dickens

#Yards #Links #Libertarian

A very little key will open a very heavy door.
-- Charles Dickens

#Educational #Keys #Doors

A new heart for a New Year, always!
-- Charles Dickens

#Inspiring #New Year #Heart

All of us have wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.
-- Charles Dickens

#Confidence #Wonder #Evoke

One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind.
-- Charles Dickens

#Travel #Forgiving #Left Behind

My dear if you could give me a cup of tea to clear my muddle of a head I should better understand your affairs.
-- Charles Dickens

#Giving #Tea #Cups

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.
-- Charles Dickens

#Exercise #Men #Sight

things cannot be expected to turn up of themselves. We must in a measure assist to turn them up
-- Charles Dickens

#Turns #Expected

Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!
-- Charles Dickens

#Liberty #Lasts #Fraternity

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
-- Charles Dickens

#Love #Inspirational #Life

It was a harder day's journey than yesterday's, for there were long and weary hills to climb; and in journeys, as in life, it is a great deal easier to go down hill than up. However, they kept on, with unabated perseverance, and the hill has not yet lifted its face to heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last.
-- Charles Dickens

#Inspirational #Perseverance #Journey

Most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.
-- Charles Dickens

#Men #Judging #World

and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves as one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.
-- Charles Dickens

#Children #Herds #Conducting

I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out...
-- Charles Dickens

#Beautiful #Struggle #Years

Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.
-- Charles Dickens

#Sports #Dream #Night

I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!
-- Charles Dickens

#New Year #Angel #School

He was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset
-- Charles Dickens

#Wise #Laughter #People

if the world go wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never meant to go right.
-- Charles Dickens

#Hands #World

No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused
-- Charles Dickens

#Regret #Opportunity #Space

Your tale is of the longest," observed Monks, moving restlessly in his chair. It is a true tale of grief and trial, and sorrow, young man," returned Mr. Brownlow, "and such tales usually are; if it were one of unmixed joy and happiness, it would be very brief.
-- Charles Dickens

#Grief #Moving #Men

Morning drew on apace. The air became more sharp and piercing, as its first dull hue: the death of night, rather than the birth of day: glimmered faintly in the sky. The objects which had looked dim and terrible in the darkness, grew more and more defined, and gradually resolved into their familiar shapes. The rain came down, thick and fast; and pattered, noisily, among the leafless bushes.
-- Charles Dickens

#Morning #Rain #Night

I'll tell you," said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, "what real love it. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter - as I did!
-- Charles Dickens

#Love #Giving Up #Real

I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.
-- Charles Dickens

#Taken #Two #Together

Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it's blowing up; and then they lengthens it out.
-- Charles Dickens

We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.
-- Charles Dickens

#Expectations #Too Late #World

Mr Jarndyce, and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarked that there were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.
-- Charles Dickens

#Class #Two #People

And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place, bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself.
-- Charles Dickens

#Bored #Bored To Death

My advice is to never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.
-- Charles Dickens

#Procrastination #Advice #Thieves

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

#Stars #Men #Would Be

There are some upon this earth of yours,' returned the Spirit, 'who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.
-- Charles Dickens

#Passion #Pride #Names

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.
-- Charles Dickens

#Rain #Fall #Wind

But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!
-- Charles Dickens

#Ocean #Men #Hands

Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed and fed to draw round the bright fire, and thank God they were at home; and for the homeless starving wretch to lay him down and die. Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our bare streets at such times, who, let their crimes have been what they may, can hardly open them in a more bitter world.
-- Charles Dickens

#Eye #Home #Dark

. . . in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker . . .
-- Charles Dickens

#Healing #Order #Mind

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
-- Charles Dickens

#Spring #Winter #Light

Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.
-- Charles Dickens

#Love #Thinking #Men

He was consious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares, long, long, forgotten.
-- Charles Dickens

#Air #Long #Joy

God bless us, every one!
-- Charles Dickens

#Blessing #God Bless #Bless

It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable, honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world, but it is very possible to know how it has touched one's self in going by.
-- Charles Dickens

#Men #Self #World

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!
-- Charles Dickens

#Men #Years #Practice

There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.
-- Charles Dickens

#Happiness #Inspiring #Laughter

To a young heart everything is fun.
-- Charles Dickens

#Fun #Heart #Young

Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.
-- Charles Dickens

#Travel #Home #Appreciate

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.
-- Charles Dickens

#Wisdom #Heart #Awareness

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.
-- Charles Dickens

#Literature #Civility

Many merry Christmases, many happy New Years. Unbroken friendships, great accumulations of cheerful recollections and affections on earth, and heaven for us all.
-- Charles Dickens

#Friendship #Christmas #New Year

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.
-- Charles Dickens

#Children #Parenting #World

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.
-- Charles Dickens

#Light #Alcohol #Cleaning

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
-- Charles Dickens

#Inspirational #Death #Book

We forge the chains we wear in life.
-- Charles Dickens

#Happiness #Law Of Attraction #Chains