Charles Dickens Expectations Quotations

Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.

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.

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

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.

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

it is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.

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

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

In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.

No varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.

Probably every new and eagerly expected garment ever put on since clothes came in, fell a trifle short of the wearer's expectation.

So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

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.

The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.

. . . 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 . . .

There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.

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

I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuadinig arguments of my best friends.

We were equals afterwards, as we had been before; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking about him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart.

There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last respect a rather common one.

But, in this separation I associate you only with the good and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you have done far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may.

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.

So new to him," she muttered, "so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us!...

The secret was such an old one now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not tear it away.

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

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

Let me feel now what sharp distress I may.

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