Quotes from Charles Dickens

Secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.

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

I believe that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen.

What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? O yes!

The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece ofspecious humbug designed to conceal it's desire for economic control ofthe Southern states.

Come, let's be a comfortable couple and take care of each other! How glad we shall be, that we have somebody we are fond of always, to talk to and sit with.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.

Old Marley was dead as a doornail... The wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile.

But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat.

No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.

To bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted delights; and there is no playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game, without growing the worse for it.

The shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.

Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.

I find my breath gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as it comes, and make the most of it. That's the best way, ain't it?

A word in earnest is as good as a speech.

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast.

He was bolder in the daylight-most men are.

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.

Trifles make the sum of life.

The universe, he observed, makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid.

Stranger, pause and ask thyself the question, Canst thou do likewise? If not, with a blush retire.

Circumstances may accumulate so strongly even against an innocent man, that directed, sharpened, and pointed, they may slay him.

I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished.