The Old Curiosity Shop Quotes

“It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“Thus violent deeds live after men upon the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will survive in mournful shapes long after those who worked the desolation are but atoms of earth themselves.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“Have I yet to learn that the hardest and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any earthly record, and are suffered every day!”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of truer metal and bear the stamp of Heaven.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“On the eve of long voyages or an absence of many years, friends who are tenderly attached will seperate with the usual look, the usual pressure of the hand, planning one final interview for the morrow, while each well knows that it is but a poor feint to save the pain of uttering that one word, and the meeting will never be. Should possibilities be worse to bear than certainties?”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“However, the Sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“The fire? It has been alive as long as I have. We talk and think together all night long. It’s like a book to me – the only book I ever learned to read; and many an old story it tells me. It’s music, for I should know its voice among a thousand, and there are other voices in its roar. It has its pictures too. You don’t know how many strange faces and different scenes I trace in the red-hot coals. It’s my memory, that fire, and shows me all my life.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“The pony preserved his character for independence and principle down to the last moment of his life; which was an unusually long one, and caused him to be looked upon, indeed, as the very Old Parr of ponies. He often went to and fro with the little phaeton between Mr. Garland's and his son's, and, as the old people and the young were frequently together, had a stable of his own at the new establishment, into which he would walk of himself with surprising dignity. He condescended to play with the children, as they grew old enough to cultivate his friendship, and would run up and down the little paddock with them like a dog; but though he relaxed so far, and allowed them such freedoms as caresses, or even to look at his shoes or hang on by his tail, he never permitted anyone among them to mount his back or drive him; thus showing that even their familiarity must have its limits, and that there were points between them far too serious for trifling.
He was not unsusceptible of warm attachments in his later life, for when the good Bachelor came to live with Mr. Garland upon the clergyman's decease, he conceived a great friendship for him, and amiably submitted to be driven by his hands without the least resistance. He did no work for two or three years before he died, but lived on clover; and his last act (like a choleric old gentleman) was to kick his doctor.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“Such is the difference between yesterday and today. We are all going to the play, or coming home from it.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“To this it must be added, that life in a wig is to a large class of people much more terrifying and impressive than life with its own head of hair …”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“When Death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world, and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. In the Destroyer's steps there spring up bright creations that defy his power, and his dark path becomes a way of light to Heaven.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“Because the memory of those who lie below, passes away so soon. At first they tend them, morning, noon, and night; they soon begin to come less frequently; from once a day, to once a week; from once a week to once a month; then, at long and uncertain intervals; then, not at all. Such tokens seldom flourish long. I have known the briefest summer flowers outlive them.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“The lady carried upon her upper lip certain reddish demonstrations, which, if the imagination had been assisted by her attire, might have been mistaken for a beard. These were, however, in all probability, nothing more than eyelashes in a wrong place, as the eyes of Miss Brass were quite free from any such natural impertinencies. In complexion Miss Brass was sallow - rather a dirty sallow, so to speak - but this hue was agreeably relieved by the healthy glow which mantled in the extreme tip of her laughing nose.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“these accidental parties are always the pleasantest,”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“Where, in the dull eyes of doating men, are the laughing light and life of childhood, the gaiety that has known no check, the frankness that has felt no chill, the hope that has never withered, the joys that fade in blossoming?”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“Let me persuade you then--oh, do let me persuade you," said the child, "to think no more of gains or losses, and to try no fortune but the fortune we pursue together.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“And from the death of each day's hope, another hope sprang up to live tomorrow.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“It was but imagination, yet imagination had all the terrors of reality; nay, it was worse, for the reality would have come and gone, and there an end, but in imagination it was always coming, and never went away.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“She seemed to exist in a kind of allegory, and having these shapes about her, claimed my interest so strongly, that (as I have already remarked) I could not dismiss her from my recollection, do what I would.

'It would be a curious speculation' said I after some restless turns across and across the room, 'to imagine her in her future life holding her solitary way among a crowd of wild grotesque companions, the only pure, fresh, youthful object among the throng.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“Heaven be thanked, I love its light and feel the cheerfulness it sheds upon the earth, as much as any creature living.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“...if they would but think how hard it is for the very poor to have engendered in their hearts, that love of home from which all domestic virtues spring, when they live in dense and squalid masses where social decency is lost, or rather never found ... and [those who rule] strive to improve the wretched dwellings in bye-ways where only Poverty may walk ... In hollow voices from Workhouse, Hospital, and jail, this truth is preached from day to day, and has been proclaimed for years.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“In the Destroyer’s steps there spring up bright creations that defy his power, and his dark path becomes a way of light to Heaven.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“The magic reel, which, rolling on before has led the chronicler thus far, now slackens its pace, and stops. It lies before the goal; the pursuit is at anend.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“Everything in our lives, whether of good or evil, affects us most by contrast”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“The place through which he made his way at leisure was one of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town and to hide their musty treasures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“Nothing seemed to be going on but the clocks, and they had such drowzy faces, such heavy lazy hands, and such cracked voices that they surely must have been too slow. The very dogs were all asleep, and the flies, drunk with moist sugar in the grocer's shop, forgot their wings and briskness, and baked to death in dusty corners of the window.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“I won't go so far as to say, that, as it is, I've seen wax-work quite like life, but I've certainly seen some life that was exactly like wax-work.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell . . . .”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“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, The Old Curiosity Shop