Quotes from Charles Dickens

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

So, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art." (Last words, according to Dickens's obituary in The Times .)

I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.

Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.

New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.

Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.

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

There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.

He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart.

He was consious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares, long, long, forgotten.

every idiot who goes about with a 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

Mr. Cruncher... always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.

She was the most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from one story to another was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea.

If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy.

REMEMBER HOW STRONG WE ARE IN OUR HAPPINESS, AND HOW WEAK HE IS IN IS MISERY!

Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.

And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that [Christmas] has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. And when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.

He would make a lovely corpse.

It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable, honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world, but it is very possible to know how it has touched one's self in going by.