David Copperfield

by Charles Dickens

“But fashions are like human beings. They come in, nobody knows when, why, or how; and they go out, nobody knows when, why, or how. Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you look at it in that point of view.”

He solemnly conjured me, I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a-year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that if he spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable.

“Never,” said my aunt, “be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.”

“Ah, child, you pass a good many hours here! I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was to write them.” “It’s work enough to read them, sometimes,” I returned. “As to the writing, it has its own charms, aunt.”