Quotes from Charles Dickens

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday - the longer, the better - from the great boarding school where we are forever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest.

Never sign a valentine with your own name.

Looking up, she showed him quite a young face, but one whose bloom and promise were all swept away, as if the haggard winter should unnaturally kill the spring.

There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories - Ghost Stories, or more shame for us - round the Christmas fire; and we have never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Never close your lips to those whom you have opened your heart.

The sum of the whole is this: walk and be happy; walk and be healthy. The best way to lengthen out our days is to walk steadily and with a purpose.

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

"It's nothing," returned Mrs Chick. "It's merely change of weather. We must expect change."

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

It is a hopeless endeavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in.

A silent look of affection and regard when all other eyes are turned coldly away--the consciousness that we possess the sympathy and affection of one being when all others have deserted us--is a hold, a stay, a comfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase, or power bestow.

There were times when he could not read the face he had studied so long, and when this lonely girl was a greater mystery to him than any women of the world...

It is good to be children sometimes, and never better that at Christmas, when its might Founder was a child Himself.

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

A friendly swarry, consisting of a boiled leg of mutton with the usual trimmings.

Black are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead

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

Strong mental agitation and disturbance was no novelty to him, even before his late sufferings. It never is, to obstinate and sullen natures; for they struggle hard to be such.

Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts.

I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. . . . I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. . . . I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.

There might be some credit in being jolly.

The sky was dark and gloomy, the air was damp and raw, the streets were wet and sloppy. The smoke hung sluggishly above the chimney-tops as if it lacked the courage to rise, and the rain came slowly and doggedly down, as if it had not even the spirit to pour.