The Uncommercial Traveller Quotes

“can see back to very early days indeed, when my bad dreams—they were frightful, though my more mature understanding has never made out why—were of an interminable sort of ropemaking, with long minute filaments for strands, which, when they were spun home together close to my eyes, occasioned screaming. ”
― Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller

“Therefore I took refuge in the caves of ignorance, wherein I have resided ever since, and which are still my private address.”
― Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller

“For precious secrets in reference to beer, am I likewise beholden to him, involving warning against the beer of a certain establishment, by reason of its having turned sour through failure in point of demand: though my young sage is not of opinion that similar deterioration has befallen the ale. ”
― Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller

“The sea makes noises against the pier, as if several hippopotami were lapping at it, and were prevented by circumstances over which they had no control from drinking peaceably.  We, the boat, become violently agitated—rumble, hum, scream, roar, and establish an immense family washing-day at each paddle-box. ”
― Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller

“wonder that the great master who knew everything, when he called Sleep the death of each day’s life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each day’s sanity.”
― Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller

“And this reminds me of my own village church where, during sermon-time on bright Sundays when the birds are very musical indeed, farmers’ boys patter out over the stone pavement, and the clerk steps out from his desk after them, and is distinctly heard in the summer repose to pursue and punch them in the churchyard, and is seen to return with a meditative countenance, making believe that nothing of the sort has happened. ”
― Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller

“Lord, how the time and Life steal on! It was but yesterday that Katie always had a scratched knee—and it was but the day before yesterday when there was no such creature.”
― Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller

“My old acquaintances the begging-letter writers came out on the fly-leaf, very piously indeed.  They were glad, at such a serious crisis, to afford me another opportunity of sending that Post-office order.  I needn’t make it a pound, as previously insisted on; ten shillings might ease my mind.  And Heaven forbid that they should refuse, at such an insignificant figure, to take a weight off the memory of an erring fellow-creature! ”
― Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller

“Down by the Docks, scraping fiddles go in the public-houses all day long, and, shrill above their din and all the din, rises the screeching of innumerable parrots brought from foreign parts, who appear to be very much astonished by what they find on these native shores of ours.  Possibly the parrots don’t know, possibly they do, that Down by the Docks is the road to the Pacific Ocean, with its lovely islands, where the savage girls plait flowers, and the savage boys carve cocoa-nut shells, and the grim blind idols muse in their shady groves to exactly the same purpose as the priests and chiefs.  And possibly the parrots don’t know, possibly they do, that the noble savage is a wearisome impostor wherever he is, and has five hundred thousand volumes of indifferent rhyme, and no reason, to answer for.”
― Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller

“But the river had an awful look, the buildings on the banks were muffled in black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding them to show where they went down.  The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river.”
― Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller

“In an evil hour, I”
― Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller