Our Mutual Friend

by Charles Dickens

Power (unless it be the power of intellect or virtue) has ever the greatest attraction for the lowest natures;

We so judge others by ourselves, that it had never come into his head before, that he might not buy us up, and might prove honest, and prefer to be poor.

My lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, when you in the course of your dust-shovelling and cinder-raking have piled up a mountain of pretentious failure, you must off with your honourable coats for the removal of it, and fall to the work with the power of all the queen's horses and all the queen's men, or it will come rushing down and bury us alive.

For when we have got things to the pass that with an enormous treasure at disposal to relieve the poor, the best of the poor detest our mercies, hide their heads from us, and shame us by starving to death in the midst of us, it is a pass impossible of prosperity, impossible of continuance.

We must mend it, lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, or in its own evil hour it will mar every one of us.

Most illogical, inconsequential, and light-headed, this; but travellers in the valley of the shadow of death are apt to be light-headed; and worn-out old people of low estate have a trick of reasoning as indifferently as they live, and doubtless would appreciate our Poor Law more philosophically on an income of ten thousand a year.

how we were all a halting, failing, feeble, and inconstant crew.

'But suppose they try to convert you!' suggested Mrs Milvey, bristling in her good little way, as a clergyman's wife. 'To do what, ma'am?' asked Lizzie, with a modest smile. 'To make you change your religion,' said Mrs Milvey. Lizzie shook her head, still smiling. 'They have never asked me what my religion is. They asked me what my story was, and I told them. They asked me to be industrious and faithful, and I promised to be so. They most willingly and cheerfully do their duty to all of us who are employed here, and we try to do ours to them. Indeed they do much more than their duty to us, for they are wonderfully mindful of us in many ways.

There are plenty of talkers going about, my love, and she will soon find one.'

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

'A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once won, goes through fire and water for the winner, and never changes, and is never daunted.'

'But if you do care for her, so much the more should you leave her to herself.'

'Why should I ask them what they want, dear fellow, when I am indifferent what they want? Why should I express objection, when I don't object?'

'Bravo!' cried Eugene, rising too. 'Or, if Yoicks would be in better keeping, consider that I said Yoicks. Look to your feet, Mortimer, for we shall try your boots. When you are ready, I am--need I say with a Hey Ho Chivey, and likewise with a Hark Forward, Hark Forward, Tantivy?'

Looking like the hunted and not the hunter, baffled, worn, with the exhaustion of deferred hope and consuming hate and anger in his face, white-lipped, wild-eyed, draggle-haired, seamed with jealousy and anger, and torturing himself with the conviction that he showed it all and they exulted in it, he went by them in the dark, like a haggard head suspended in the air: so completely did the force of his expression cancel his figure.

If great criminals told the truth--which, being great criminals, they do not--they would very rarely tell of their struggles against the crime. Their struggles are towards it. They buffet with opposing waves, to gain the bloody shore, not to recede from it.

Here is the country road, and here is the day. Both have come upon me by surprise.'

'no luck never come yet of a dry acquaintance. Let's wet it, in a mouth-fill of rum and milk, T'otherest Governor.'

He had been spurred and whipped and heavily sweated. If a record of the sport had usurped the places of the peaceful texts from Scripture on the wall, the most advanced of the scholars might have taken fright and run away from the master.

'Not his merit that he don't cheat me,' was Mr Fledgeby's commentary delivered with a wink, 'but my precaution.'

But if you have friends in adversity, stand by them. That's what I say and act up to.'

"My blessing on this engagement betwixt you, and she brings you a good fortune when she brings you the poverty she has accepted for your sake and the honest truth's!"'

'It is very strange,' says Mrs Lammle, coldly and boldly, and with some disdain, 'how like men are to one another in some things, though their characters are as different as can be!

'Men are very wise in their way,' quoth Mrs Lammle, glancing haughtily at the Snigsworth portrait, and shaking out her dress before departing; 'but they have wisdom to learn.

My husband and I deceived one another when we married; we must bear the consequences of the deception--that is to say, bear one another, and bear the burden of scheming together for to-day's dinner and to-morrow's breakfast--till death divorces us.'

These friends, like astronomical distances, are only to be spoken of in the very largest figures.

Fathers of the Scrip-Church:

'Suppose you have no means and live beyond them?'

This is too insolvent a state of things for the Father to entertain. It is too insolvent a state of things for any one with any self-respect to entertain, and is universally scouted.

But it's so easy to hope not and think not, without the riches.'

'Why don't I say, being poor! Because I am not poor. Dear John, it's not possible that you suppose I think we are poor?'

Wish me everything that you can wish for the woman you dearly love, and I have as good as got it, John. I have better than got it, John!'

There's no royal road to learning; and what is life but learning!'

What is there but self, for selfishness to see behind it?

'I thought it was you?' said Fledgeby, coming up the two steps. 'Did you?' Miss Wren retorted. 'And I thought it was you, young man. Quite a coincidence. You're not mistaken, and I'm not mistaken. How clever we are!'

This frequent rising of a drowning man from the deep, to sink again, was dreadful to the beholders.

Love is in all things a most wonderful teacher, and perhaps love (from a pictorial point of view, with nothing on but a thimble), had been teaching this branch of needlework to Mrs John Rokesmith.

I'll hold you living, and I'll hold you dead.

'We know what Russia means, sir,' says Podsnap; 'we know what France wants; we see what America is up to; but we know what England is. That's enough for us.'

'I say,' resumes Twemlow, 'if such feelings on the part of this gentleman, induced this gentleman to marry this lady, I think he is the greater gentleman for the action, and makes her the greater lady. I beg to say, that when I use the word, gentleman, I use it in the sense in which the degree may be attained by any man. The feelings of a gentleman I hold sacred, and I confess I am not comfortable when they are made the subject of sport or general discussion.'

There is sometimes an odd disposition in this country to dispute as improbable in fiction, what are the commonest experiences in fact.

In the majority of the shameful cases of disease and death from destitution, that shock the Public and disgrace the country, the illegality is quite equal to the inhumanity--and known language could say no more of their lawlessness.