Charles Dickens Quotes

“It shows that you don’t expect, as many elderly people do expect, old heads on young shoulders.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Novels

“The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known. Thus, a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odour of a flower, or the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were, in this life; which vanish like a breath; which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have awakened; which no voluntary exertion of the mind can ever recall.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Novels

“There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson’s Bank. You must know Tellson’s Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this?” “If so be as you’re quick, sir.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels (Book Center)

“Mr. Pickwick, it is quite unnecessary to say, was one of the most modest and delicate-minded of mortals. The very idea of exhibiting his nightcap to a lady overpowered him, but he had tied those confounded strings in a knot, and, do what he would, he couldn’t get it off. The disclosure must be made.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“One hundred and five, North Tower!”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“Come, then!” cried Defarge, in a resounding voice. “Patriots and friends, we are ready! The Bastille!”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their way into anybody’s life, footsteps not easily made clean again if once stained red, the footsteps raging in Saint Antoine afar off, as the little circle sat in the dark London window.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“You have no idea how such an apprehension weighs on the sufferer’s mind, and how difficult — how almost impossible — it is, for him to force himself to utter a word upon the topic that oppresses him.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally broke some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it;”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. 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. Chapter 6 — Hundreds of People The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had roiled over the trial for treason, and carried”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“the Court of King’s Bench, the florid countenance of Mr. Stryver might be daily seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs, like a great sunflower pushing its way at the sun from among a rank garden-full of flaring companions.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“a buzz arose in the court as if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about the prisoner, in anticipation of what he was soon to become.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“in short, that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner’s head was taken off.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept, that “Whatever is is right;” an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“throwing off other sarcastic sparks from the whirling grindstone of his indignation,”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote from this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have even yet discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suffered or done: the shadows of the night were broad and black. All through the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry — sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were for ever lost to him, and what were capable of restoration — the old inquiry: “I hope you care to be recalled to life?” And the old answer: “I can’t say.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“And so, under a short grove of feebler and feebler over-swinging lamps, out under the great grove of stars.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“Only one soul was to be seen, and that was Madame Defarge — who leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing. The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followed him, when Mr. Lorry’s feet were arrested on the step by his asking, miserably, for his shoemaking tools and the unfinished shoes. Madame Defarge immediately called to her husband that she would get them, and went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the courtyard. She quickly brought them down and handed them in; — and immediately afterwards leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“indefatigable”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“of Taunton. The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“instance”
― Charles Dickens, Complete Novels of Charles Dickens

“It completely conveyed the idea of a man who had been born, not to say with a silver spoon, but with a scaling-ladder, and had gone on mounting all the heights of life one after another, until now he looked, from the top of the fortifications, with the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the people down in the trenches.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“We must live misfortune down,”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“persons would have mourned a much greater offence; for, in the majority of cases, conscience is an elastic and very flexible article, which will bear a deal of stretching and adapt itself to a great variety of circumstances. Some people by prudent management and leaving it off piece by piece like a flannel waistcoat in warm weather, even contrive, in time, to dispense with it altogether; but there be others who can assume the garment and throw it off at pleasure; and this, being the greatest and most convenient improvement, is the one most in vogue.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“a second-hand wig box, used as a depository for blank writs and declarations and other small forms of law, once the sole contents of the head which belonged to the wig which belonged to the box, as they were now of the box itself;”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“Pumblechook made out, after carefully surveying the premises, that he had first got upon the roof of the forge, and had then got upon the roof of the house, and had then let himself down the kitchen chimney by a rope made of his bedding cut into strips; and as Mr. Pumblechook was very positive and drove his own chaise-cart — over Everybody — it was agreed that it must be so. Mr. Wopsle, indeed, wildly cried out, “No!” with the feeble malice of a tired man; but, as he had no theory, and no coat on, he was unanimously set at naught,— not to mention his smoking hard behind, as he stood with his back to the kitchen fire to draw the damp out: which was not calculated to inspire confidence.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“Such is hope, Heaven’s own gift to struggling mortals; pervading, like some subtle essence from the skies, all things, both good and bad; as universal as death, and more infectious than disease!”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“he took to scorning everything, and became a genius;”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“He may be too proud to let any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills well and with respect.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels

“O! there are many kinds of pride,” said Biddy, looking full at me and shaking her head; “pride is not all of one kind —”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels