Charles Dickens Quotations

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

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

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

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.

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

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.

There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

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!

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature .

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.

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.

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

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

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

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

Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.

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

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.

It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!

There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.

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

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

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.

Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

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

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match.

Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows - and china.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

You don't carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

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

The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you

Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!

This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.

It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.

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

'Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

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

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

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.

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that.

He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favor of two.

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity's small change in general society.

One of these flaws was, that having been long taught by his father to over-reach everybody he had imperceptibly acquired a love of over-reaching that venerable monitor himself. The other, that from his early habits of considering everything as a question of property, he had gradually come to look, with impatience, on his parent as a certain amount of personal estate, which had no right whatever to be going at large, but ought to be secured in that particular description of iron safe which is commonly called a coffin, and banked in the grave.

On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip; such is Life!

. . . when the locked door opens, and there comes in a young woman, deadly pale, and with long fair hair, who glides to the fire, and sits down in the chair we have left there, wringing her hands.

Oh, what a misfortune is mine, cried Bradley, breaking off to wipe the starting perspiration from his face as he shook from head to foot, ""that I cannot so control myself as to appear a stronger creature than this, when a man who has not felt in all his life what I have felt in a day can so command himself!"" He said it in a very agony, and even followed it with an errant motion of his hands as if he could have torn himself.

No one is useless in the world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.

No one is useless in this world, retorted the Secretary, ""who lightens the burden of it for any one else.

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.

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. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!

Lead on! said Scrooge. ""Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!

Mr Podsnap settled that whatever he put behind him he put out of existence . . . Mr Podsnap had even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm in often clearing the world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them behind him.

Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself.

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

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

Minerva House... was ""a finishing establishment for young ladies,"" where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.

Minerva House was ''a finishing establishment for young ladies,'' where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.

Miss Bolo rose from the table considerably agitated, and went straight home, in a flood of tears and a Sedan chair.

She is come at last - at last - and all is gas and gaiters!

When you're a married man, Samivel, you'll understand a good many things as you don't understand now; but whether it's worth while, going through so much, to learn so little, as the charity-boy said when he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o taste.

Many merry Christmases, friendships, great accumulation of cheerful recollections, affection on earth, and Heaven at last for all of us.

O let us love our occupations,/ Bless the squire and his relations,/ Live upon our daily rations,/ And always know our proper stations.

She's the only sylph I ever saw, who could stand upon one leg, and play the tambourine on her other knee, like a sylph.

When they were all tired of blind-man's buff, there was a great game at snap-dragon, and when fingers enough were burned with that, and all the raisins were gone, they sat down by the huge fire of blazing lags to a substantial supper, and a mighty bowl of wassail, something smaller than an ordinary wash-house copper, in which the hot apples were hissing and bubbling with a rich look, and a jolly sound, that were perfectly irresistible.

Half a crown in the bill, if you look at the waiter.

I am the Ghost of Christmas Present, said the Spirit. ""Look upon me!

Give us kinder laws to bring us back when we're a-going wrong and don't set Jail, Jail, Jail afore us everywhere we turn

But the words she spoke of Mrs Harris, lambs could not forgive . . . nor worms forget.

Battledore and shuttlecock's a wery good game, vhen you ain't the shuttlecock and two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too excitin' to be pleasant

I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects.

I have always thought of Christmas as a good time; a kind, forgiving, generous, pleasant time; a time when men and women seem to open their hearts freely, and so I say, God bless Christmas!

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable 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, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

I am always conscious of an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in the east.