Charles Dickens Quotes: 42

• A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

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

• There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.

  A Christmas Carol

• Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.

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

  Great Expectations

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

  Oliver Twist

• 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.

  Great Expectations

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

• A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

  A Tale of Two Cities

• 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.

  Great Expectations

• What greater gift than the love of a cat.

• I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.

  A Tale of Two Cities

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

  Hard Times

• ‎And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.

  A Tale of Two Cities

• Before I go,"he said, and paused -- "I may kiss her?"It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched her face with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a handsome old lady, that she heard him say, "A life you love.

  A Tale of Two Cities

• 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.

• That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. 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.

  Great Expectations

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

  Nicholas Nickleby

• 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.

  Great Expectations

• There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.

  David Copperfield

• And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done-- done, see you!-- under that sky there, every day.

  A Tale of Two Cities

• He went to the church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and for, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of homes, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed of any walk, that anything, could give him so much happiness. (p. 119)

  A Christmas Carol

• 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.

  Nicholas Nickleby

• She was the most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from one story to another was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea.

  Hard Times

• So, 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.

  Great Expectations

• Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.

  The Pickwick Papers

• 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.

  Great Expectations

• Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art."(Last words, according to Dickens's obituary in The Times.)

  Five Novels: Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations

• Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.

  Great Expectations

• . . . 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 . . .

  Great Expectations

• 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.

  Hard Times

• [She wasn't] a logically reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in heaven as high as heads.

  Our Mutual Friend

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

• I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.

  A Tale of Two Cities

• She dotes on poetry, sir. She adores it; I may say that her whole soul and mind are wound up, and entwined with it. She has produced some delightful pieces, herself, sir. You may have met with her 'Ode to an Expiring Frog,' sir.

  The Pickwick Papers

• Never say never

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

  Oliver Twist

• I never heard that it had been anybody’s business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to him. He had been adapted to the verses and had learnt the art of making them to such perfection. I did doubt whether Richard would not have profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his studying them quite so much.

  Bleak House

• I have a pretty large experience of boys, and you're a bad set of fellows. Now mind!

  Great Expectations

• He couldn't be a doctor, or he would have a quieter and more persuasive manner.

  Great Expectations

• They ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas instead of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances.

  Great Expectations

• He was always so zealous and honorable in fulfilling his compact with me, that he made me zealous and honorable in fulfilling mine with him. If he had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have returned the compliment as a pupil. He gave me no such excuse, and each of us did the other justice.

  Great Expectations