Quotes from Charles Dickens

Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better.

and a little blear-eyed, weazen-faced, ancient man came creeping out. He was of a remote fashion, and dusty, like the rest of the furniture; he was dressed in a decayed suit of black; with breeches garnished at the knees with rusty wisps of ribbon, the very paupers of shoestrings; on the lower portion of his spindle legs were dingy worsted stockings of the same colour. He looked as if he had been put away and forgotten half a century before,

Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones

I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what we should pray for, was, that our women might be barren and our miserable race die out!

The mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.

Pride is not all of one kind.

Mr. Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together under existing circumstances. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this pressing interest under his consideration, the fat forefinger seems to rise, to the dignity of a familiar demon. He puts it to his ears, and it whispers information; he puts it to his lips, and it enjoins him to secrecy; he rubs it over his nose, and it sharpens his scent; he shakes it before a guilty man, and it charms him to his destruction.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope,

Imagine my not letting him sink, as I was his fag!' said Mr. Tartar.

No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.

Így van ez egész életünk során: legsötétebb perceinkben olyan emberek gusztusa szerint cselekszünk, akik megvetésünk tárgyai egyébként.

His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him. He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!

that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into

For now, the very breath of the beans and clover whispered to my heart that the day must come when it would be well for my memory that others walking in the sunshine should be softened as they thought of me.

non sono vecchio, ma le vie della mia giovinezza non sono state mai di quelle che portano alla vecchiaia

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.

Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept: even The Vengeance slept with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum's was the only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. The Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have wakened him up and had the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon was seized; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint Antoine's bosom.

Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept, that "Whatever is right;" an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.

These people hated me with the hatred of cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course, they fawned upon me in my prosperity with the basest meanness.

But the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself, for all that, and in his secret mind it troubled him greatly.

Junto dela nunca tive nem uma hora de felicidade, mas, mesmo assim, meu espírito, durante as vinte e quatro horas do dia, ainda desejava a felicidade de tê-la junto de mim até a morte.

But I like business,' said Pancks, getting on a little faster. 'What's a man made for?' 'For nothing else?' said Clennam. Pancks put the counter question, 'What else?' It packed up, in the smallest compass, a weight that had rested on Clennam's life; and he made no answer.

Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to be a little dry brown corrugated old woman, with a small face that might have been made of walnut shells...

Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's misused oppurtunities!