Hymnary.org - a comprehensive index of hymns and hymnals

United Methodist Hymnal - iPad App

Center for Excellence in Preaching - Every week has a Sunday. Every preacher needs fresh ideas.

Charles Dickens

Page loading...

Summary Quotes Influence

Summary

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic who is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period and the creator of some of the world's most memorable fictional characters. During his lifetime Dickens' works enjoyed unprecedented popularity and fame, but it was in the twentieth century that his literary genius was fully recognized by critics and scholars.

Born

Died

Related topics

Importance

February 7, 1812
Portsmouth, Hampshire, England

June 9, 1870
Gads Hill Place

Biography, Criticism (interpretation), England, Fiction, History

Top

Quotes by Charles Dickens

“He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favor of two.”

“This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.”

“Many merry Christmases, friendships, great accumulation of cheerful recollections, affection on earth, and Heaven at last for all of us.”

“Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances... in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.”

“Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature .”

“They are so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a water-closet doormat.”

“My other piece of advice, Copperfield, said Mr. Micawber, you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, andand, in short, you are for ever floored. As I am!”

“With affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.”

“I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.”

“The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.”

“Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.”

“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”

“Minds, like bodies, will fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.”

“Mind like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.”

“It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither.”

“Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.”

“I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness.”

“It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.”

“Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.”

“We know, Mr. Weller -- we, who are men of the world -- that a good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later.”

“the most interesting woman he met in the United States”

“To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan and watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to the falling rain, and crouch for warmth beneath the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things -- but not so dismal as the wandering up and down where shelter is, and beds and sleepers are by thousands; a houseless rejected creature.”

“A man in public life expects to be sneered at -- it is the fault of his elevated situation, and not of himself.”

“I never see any difference in boys. I only know two sorts of boys. Mealy boys and beef-faced boys.”

“The whole difference between construction and creation is this; that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”

“Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!”

“When you're a married man, Samivel, you'll understand a good many things as you don't understand now; but whether it's worth while, going through so much, to learn so little, as the charity-boy said when he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o taste.”

“Dollars! All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations seemed to be melted down into dollars. Whatever the chance contributions that fell into the slow cauldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick and slab with dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, measures were gauged by their dollars; life was auctioned, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars. The next respectable thing to dollars was any venture having their attainment for its end. The more of that worthless ballast, honor and fair-dealing, which any man cast overboard from the ship of his Good Nature and Good Intent, the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars. Make commerce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the nation for an idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by stripe as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars! What is a flag to them!”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other wayin short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

“A loving heart is the truest wisdom.”

“I do not know the American gentleman, God forgive me for putting two such words together.”

“It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.”

“Here's the rule for bargains: Do other men, for they would do you. That's the true business precept.”

“Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.”

“I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomized our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me.”

“Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance would seem to be the signal for instant confusion. The mine which Time has slowly dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock before, becomes but sand and dust.”

“It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.”

“Such is hope, heaven's own gift to struggling mortals, pervading, like some subtle essence from the skies, all things both good and bad.”

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

“Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.”

“Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.”

“There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.”

“He would make a lovely corpse.”

“I revere the memory of Mr. F. as an estimable man and most indulgent husband, only necessary to mention Asparagus and it appeared or to hint at any little delicate thing to drink and it came like magic in a pint bottle; it was not ecstasy but it was comfort.”

“I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time...”

“If its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body, they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists, at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.”

“There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.”

“Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.”

“The word of a gentleman is as good as his bond; and sometimes better.”

“If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.”

“Philosophers are only men in armor after all.”

“Now, what I want is, facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”

“The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland, sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!”

“A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match.”

“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

“There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.”

“It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.”

“Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.”

“Regrets are the natural property of gray hairs.”

“Minerva House was a finishing establishment for young ladies, where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.”

“A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.”

“I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.”

“A boy's story is the best that is ever told.”

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”

“Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.”

“Its very strange, said Mr. Dick that I never can get that quite right; I never can make that perfectly clear.”

“Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.”

“Take example by your father, my boy, and be very careful of vidders all your life, specially if they've kept a public house, Sammy.”

“Keep out of Chancery. It's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains.”

“God bless us every one! said Tiny Tim, the last of all.”

“A lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper -- a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable.”

“There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.”

“Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!”

“A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside; and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact, in one of the spice islands of the Indian Ocean.”

“It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.”

“If the law supposes that, said Mr. Bumble, the law is a assa idiot. If thats the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experienceby experience.”

“Lord, keep my memory green.”

“Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.”

“Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.”

Show all 79 quotes

Top

Influence of Charles Dickens

Works published by Charles Dickens

?

Works published about Charles Dickens

?

People influenced by Charles Dickens

?

Top