"There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate."
— Charles Dickens

"There are books by which the backs and covers are by far the best parts."
— Charles Dickens

"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 (A Tale of Two Cities)

"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."
— Charles Dickens

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another."
— Charles Dickens

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

"We need never be ashamed of our tears"
— Charles Dickens

"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 (Great Expectations)

"No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot."
— Charles Dickens

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

"A loving heart is the truest wisdom."
— Charles Dickens

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
— Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)

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

"Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him."
— Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)

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

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

"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."
— Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)

"My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. "
— Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)

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

"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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
— Charles Dickens

". . . there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor (p. 77)"
— Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)

"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."
— Charles Dickens

"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 (A Christmas Carol)

"You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
— Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.""
— Charles Dickens

"Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart."
— Charles Dickens

"Trifles make the sum of life. "
— Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)

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

". . .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 (Great Expectations)

"Never close your lips to those who have opened your heart."
— Charles Dickens

"...every idiot who goes about with a 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart."
— Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)

"To a young heart everything is fun."
— Charles Dickens

" . . . Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It's so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy."
— Charles Dickens

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

"Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself."
— Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)

"My advice is to never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the theif of time."
— Charles Dickens

"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other."
— Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)

"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 (A Tale of Two Cities)

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

"Marley was dead: to begin with."
— Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)

"For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in this one thing. The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you--ties that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn--the dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!"
— Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)

"Credit is a system whereby a person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay."
— Charles Dickens

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

"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 highky 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."
— Charles Dickens (Hard Times)

"I do not know the American gentleman, God forgive me for putting two such words together."
— Charles Dickens

"Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers, and are famous preservers of good looks."
— Charles Dickens

"There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose."
— Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)

"A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it."
— Charles Dickens

"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 (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."
— Charles Dickens