The Complete Works of Charles Dickens Quotes

“Let us leave our old friend in one of those moments of unmixed happiness, of which, if we seek them, there are ever some, to cheer our transitory existence here. There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. Some men, like bats or owls, have better eyes for the darkness than for the light. We, who have no such optical powers, are better pleased to take our last parting look at the visionary companions of many solitary hours, when the brief sunshine of the world is blazing full upon them.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“G. K. Chesterton wrote in Charles Dickens, that The Pickwick Papers was neither a good novel nor a bad novel but in fact ‘not a novel at all.’ He believed it was “something nobler than a novel”. Certainly it was never conceived as a novel but merely as the letterpress to accompany the “cockney sporting plates”. Unfortunately Robert Seymour committed suicide after the first two instalments so the third one was undertaken by Robert Buss whose work Dickens did not like and consequently the task fell to Hablot Knight Browne, who took the name “Phiz” and continued an artistic relationship with Dickens, illustrating many of his novels.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“Quiet people avoid the question of the Presidency, for there will be a new election in three years and a half, and party feeling runs very high: the great constitutional feature of this institution being, that directly the acrimony of the last election is over, the acrimony of the next one begins;”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“Mr. Wititterly, it should be observed, was accustomed to owe small accounts, and to leave them owing. All men have some little pleasant way of their own; and this was Mr. Wititterly’s.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“Who is Slumkey?’whispered Mr. Tupman. ‘I don’t know,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, in the same tone. ‘Hush. Don’t ask any questions. It’s always best on these occasions to do what the mob do.’ ‘But suppose there are two mobs?’ suggested Mr. Snodgrass. ‘Shout with the largest,’ replied Mr. Pickwick. Volumes could not have said more.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“The rich mould of dead men’s graves. Creeping where grim death has been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Whole ages have fled and their works decayed, And nations have scattered been; But the stout old Ivy shall never fade, From its hale and hearty green. The brave old plant in its lonely days, Shall fatten upon the past; For the stateliest building man can raise, Is the Ivy’s food at last. Creeping on where time has been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“From the outset Dickens seemed to take charge even though he was younger than Seymour and less well known. His narrative input seemed to drive the content of the comic plates, which eventually led to the story becoming the main point of interest and with the death of Seymour the plates were reduced to two an instalment whereas the text increased to 16,000 words. Dickens succeeded where his predecessors had failed, making the print more important than the illustration.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“But there are many kinds of hunters engaged in the Pursuit of Happiness, and they go variously armed. It is the Inalienable Right of some among them, to take the field after THEIR Happiness equipped with cat and cartwhip, stocks, and iron collar, and to shout their view halloa! (always in praise of Liberty) to the music of clanking chains and bloody stripes.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“What are the fifty newspapers, which those precocious urchins are bawling down the street, and which are kept filed within, what are they but amusements? Not vapid, waterish amusements, but good strong stuff; dealing in round abuse and blackguard names; pulling off the roofs of private houses, as the Halting Devil did in Spain; pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious taste, and gorging with coined lies the most voracious maw; imputing to every man in public life the coarsest and the vilest motives; scaring away from the stabbed and prostrate body-politic, every Samaritan of clear conscience and good deeds; and setting on, with yell and whistle and the clapping of foul hands, the vilest vermin and worst birds of prey.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the great kitchen, where every prisoner's dinner was in course of being set out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred ever dined half so well. But I learned that the 'system' required high living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found that on that head and on all others, 'the system' put an end to all doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered.”
― Charles Dickens, Works of Charles Dickens

“That the crowning miracle of all the miracles summed up in the New Testament, after the miracle of the blind seeing, and the lame walking, and the restoration of the dead to life, was the miracle that the poor had the Gospel preached to them. That while the poor were unnaturally and unnecessarily cut off by the thousand, in the prematurity of their age, or in the rottenness of their youth - for of flower or blossom such youth has none - the Gospel was NOT preached to them, saving in hollow and unmeaning voices. That of all wrongs, this was the first mighty wrong the Pestilence warned us to set right. And that no Post- Office Order to any amount, given to a Begging-Letter Writer for the quieting of an uneasy breast, would be presentable on the Last Great Day as anything towards it.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“It was evident from the general tone of the whole party, that they had come to regard insolvency as the normal state of mankind, and the payment of debts as a disease that occasionally broke out. In this strange scene, and with these strange spectres flitting about him, Arthur Clennam looked on at the preparations as if they were part of a dream.”
― Charles Dickens, Works of Charles Dickens

“is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am. I shall sink lower, and be worse.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“Because, if it is to spite her," Biddy pursued, "I should think — but you know best — that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think — but you know best — she was not worth gaining over.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: Collection of 150 Classic Works with analysis and historical background

“I suppose I must catch it — like a cough,”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: Collection of 150 Classic Works with analysis and historical background

“didn't bring you up by hand to badger people's lives out. It would be blame to me, and not praise, if I had. People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed!”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: Collection of 150 Classic Works with analysis and historical background

“Answer him one question, and he'll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison-ships, right 'cross th' meshes." We always used that name for marshes, in our country.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: Collection of 150 Classic Works with analysis and historical background

“My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbours because she had brought me up "by hand.”
― Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens: Collection of 150 Classic Works with analysis and historical background

“These children will be the death of me at last!” said Mrs. Tetterby, after banishing the culprit.  “And the sooner the better, I think.” “Poor people,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ought not to have children at all.  They give us no pleasure.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“Everybody said so. Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true.  Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right.  In the general experience, everybody has been wrong so often, and it has taken, in most instances, such a weary while to find out how wrong, that the authority is proved to be fallible.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“finding”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works

“So Richard asked her; whatever she said, it wasn’t No; and they were married in good earnest that day week.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“Over and above these trifling penalties, his name was erased and blotted out from the roll of attorneys; which erasure has been always held in these latter times to be a great degradation and reproach, and to imply the commission of some amazing villany — as indeed it would seem to be the case, when so many worthless names remain among its better records, unmolested.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“She cannot bear the thought!’ cried the boy, exulting through his tears. ‘You will not go. You know how sorry we should be. Dear Nell, tell me that you’ll stay amongst us. Oh! Pray, pray, tell me that you will.’ The little creature folded his hands, and knelt down at her feet. ‘Only look at me, Nell,’ said the boy, ‘and tell me that you’ll stop, and then I shall know that they are wrong, and will cry no more. Won’t you say yes, Nell?’ Still the drooping head and hidden face, and the child quite silent — save for her sobs.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“a state of things which occasioned the two mothers, who walked behind, to declare that they looked quite family folks, and caused Barbara to blush and say, ‘Now don’t, mother!’ But Kit said she had no call to mind what they said; and indeed she need not have had, if she had known how very far from Kit’s thoughts any love-making was. Poor Barbara!”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“and even his mother said (looking accidentally at Barbara at the same time) that there was no doubt Miss Nell was very pretty, but she was but a child after all, and there were many young women quite as pretty as she; and Barbara mildly observed that she should think so, and that she never could help believing Mr Christopher must be under a mistake — which Kit wondered at very much, not being able to conceive what reason she had for doubting him. Barbara’s mother too, observed that it was very common for young folks to change at about fourteen or fifteen, and whereas they had been very pretty before, to grow up quite plain; which truth she illustrated by many forcible examples, especially one of a young man, who, being a builder with great prospects, had been particular in his attentions to Barbara, but whom Barbara would have nothing to say to; which (though everything happened for the best) she almost thought was a pity. Kit said he thought so too, and so he did honestly, and he wondered what made Barbara so silent all at once, and why his mother looked at him as if he shouldn’t have said it.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“Stay — the words are written, and may go, but if they convey any notion that Kit, in the plentiful board and comfortable lodging of his new abode, began to think slightingly of the poor fare and furniture of his old dwelling, they do their office badly and commit injustice.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“Stay — the words are written, and may go, but if they convey any notion that Kit, in the plentiful board and comfortable lodging of his new abode, began to think slightingly of the poor fare and”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“All the gentlemen were very pigeon-breasted and very blue about the beards; and all the ladies were miraculous figures; and all the ladies and all the gentlemen were looking intensely nowhere, and staring with extraordinary earnestness at nothing.”
― Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens

“Her severe face had no thread of relaxation in it, by which any explorer could have been guided to the gloomy labyrinth of her thoughts.”
― Charles Dickens, The Charles Dickens Collection: Boxed Set