Quotes from Charles Dickens

La historia la cuenta el mismo protagonista, y el desafío a que se tuvo que enfrentar Dickens al concebir este narrador en primera persona tiene una doble vertiente. Por un lado, debió asegurarse de que Pip sonara convincente cuando confiesa sus errores para que no pensemos que los admite simplemente para ganar nuestra simpatía; por otro, tuvo que probar la redención de Pip, y demostrar que esta no solo se traduce en palabras, sino también en hechos.

PREFACE TO THE 1857 EDITION I

What have paupers to do with soul or spirit? It's quite enough that we let 'em have live bodies

Their shadows were defined upon the wall, but those of the high presses in the room were all blended together on the wall and on the ceiling, as if the brother and sister were overhung by a dark cavern. Or, a fanciful imagination—if such treason could have been there—might have made it out to be the shadow of their subject, and of its lowering association with their future.

And instinct (a word we all clearly understand) going largely on four legs, and reason always on two, meanness on four legs never attains the perfection of meanness on two.

This may be premature. I have set it down too soon, perhaps. But let it stand.

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.

As if, in the gap he had left, the wedge of change were driven to the head, rending what was a solid mass to fragments, things cemented and held together by the usages of years, burst asunder in as many weeks. 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.

No era Esteban hombre galante, hermoso, ni llamativo en sentido alguno; sin embargo, en la manera como aceptó el obsequio y en el modo que tuvo de darlas gracias sin excederse en palabras, había una elegancia que ni en un siglo de aleccionamiento hubiera podido lord Chesterfield enseñar a su propio hijo.

Unutmu?um," dedi. "Beni a?latt???n?z? unuttunuz ha?" Onun bu unutkanl???, ilgisizli?i bana gene için için kan a?latt? ki a?lay??lar?n en ac?s? bence budur.

Mr. Stryver, a man of little more than thirty, but looking twenty years older than he was, stout, loud, red, bluff, and free from any drawback of delicacy, had a pushing way of shouldering himself (morally and physically) into companies and conversations, that argued well for his shouldering his way up in life.

Why money should be so precious to an Ass too dull and mean to exchange it for any other satisfaction, is strange; but there is no animal so sure to get laden with it, as the Ass who sees nothing written on the face of the earth and sky but the three letters L. S. D.—not Luxury, Sensuality, Dissoluteness, which they often stand for, but the three dry letters. Your concentrated Fox is seldom comparable to your concentrated Ass in money-breeding.

Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy; but when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with another secret burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can testify) a great punishment.

The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece

How do you do, ma'am?" said the captain. "I am very glad to see you. I have come a long way to see you.

But his youthful fire was all composed of sparks from the grindstone; and as the sparks flew off, went out, and never warmed anything ...

It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust

But fashions are like human beings. They come in, nobody knows when, why, or how; and they go out, nobody knows when, why, or how. Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you look at it in that point of view.

Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh

It's not much of a place: only a loft; but, having a loft, I always say, is one of the great conveniences of living in a mews; and till this coach-house and stable gets a better let, we live here cheap. There's plenty of sweet hay up there, belonging to a neighbour; and it's as clean as hands, and Meg, can make it. Cheer up! Don't give way. A new heart for a New Year, always!

Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!

tumbril on his way to the Guillotine.

Most illogical, inconsequential, and light-headed this. But travelers in the valley of the shadow of death are apt to be light-headed. And worn out old people of low estate have a trick of reasoning as indifferently as they live ...

Oh woman, God beloved in old Jerusalem! The best among us need deal lightly with thy faults, if only for the punishment thy nature will endure, in bearing heavy evidence against us, on the Day of Judgment!