Quotes from Charles Dickens

When I have heard him talking to Papa during the sittings for the picture, I have sat wondering whether it could be that he has no belief in anybody else, because he has no belief in himself.

Its matter was not new to me, but was presented in a new aspect. It shook me in my habit - the habit of nine-tenths of the world - of believing that all was right about me, because I was used to it.

My daughter, there are times of moral danger when the hardest virtuous resolution to form is flight, and when the most heroic bravery is flight.

Affery, like greater people, had always been right in her facts, and always wrong in the theories she deduced from them.

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.

Can you suppose there's any harm in looking as cheerful and being as cheerful as our poor circumstances will permit?

... No, the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me.

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!

You will profit by the failure, and will avoid it another time. I have done a similar thing myself, in construction, often. Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn.

Surprises, like misfortunes, seldom come alone.

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.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

All the housemaid hopes is, happiness for 'em - but marriage is a lottery, and the more she thinks about it, the more she feels the independence and the safety of a single life.

Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn; and you are too sensible a man not to learn from this failure.

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.

The worst of all listeners is the man who does nothing but listen.

Of all bad listeners, the worst and most terrible to encounter is the man who is so fond of listening that he wishes to hear, not only your conversation, but that of every other person in the room.

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

Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.

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

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

It was a sweet and happy dream. The quiet spot, outside, seemed to remain the same, save that there was music in the air, and a sound of angels' wings.

Oh, how the strife and trouble of daily life receded from my view, and lessened in the distance... What voices spoke from out the thundering water; what faces, faded from the earth, looked out upon me from its gleaming depths; what Heavenly promise glistened in those angels' tears, the drops of many hues, that showered around, and twined themselves about the gorgeous arches which the changing rainbows made!

...his gaze wandered from the windows to the stars, as if he would have read in them something that was hidden from him. Many of us would if we could; but none of us so much as know our letters in the stars yet, — or seem likely to do it in this state of existence, — a few languages can be read until their alphabets are mastered.