Quotes by Charles Dickens

Where is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?Shes gone forrard to the Police Office, returns Mr Bucket. Youll see her there, my dear.I would like to kiss her! exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting tigress-like. Youd bite her, I suspect, says Mr Bucket.I would! making her eyes very large. I would love to tear her, limb from limb.Bless you, darling, says Mr Bucket, with the greatest composure; Im fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising animosity against one another, when you do differ.

Bless the bright eyes of your sex! They never see, whether for good or bad, more than one side of any question; and that is always, the one which first presents itself to them.

Such a number of nights, said the girl, with a touch of womans tenderness, which communicated something like sweetness of tone, even to her voice; such a number of nights as Ive been patient with you, nursing and caring for you, as if you had been a child: and this the first that Ive seen you like yourself; you wouldnt have served me as you did just now, if youd thought of that, would you? Come, come; say you wouldnt.

But struggling with these better feelings was pride,--the vice of the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself,--even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone conneced her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when a very child.

The girls life had been squandered in the streets, and among the most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was something of the womans original nature left in her still; and when she heard a light step approaching the door opposite to that by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which the small room would in another moment contain, she felt burdened with the sense of her own deep shame: and shrunk as though she could scarcely bear the presence of her with whom she had sought this interview.

Always the way! muttered the Jew to himself as he turned homewards. The worst of these women is, that a very little thing serves to call up some long-forgotten feeling; and the best of them is, that it never lasts. Ha! ha!

Sudden shifts and changes are no bad preparation for political life.

The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.

The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned — would never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die.

He has the power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our service light or burdensome, a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks, in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count em up; what then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.

The miserable man was a man of that confined stolidity of mind that he could not discuss my prospects without having me before him.

She led me to believe we will going fast because her thoughts were going fast.

It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain.

Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of

There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk.

It cant be supposed, said Joe. Tho Im oncommon fond of reading, too.Are you, Joe?Oncommon. Give me, said Joe, a good book, or a good newspaper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord! he continued, after rubbing his knees a little, when you do come to a J and a O, and says you, Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe, how interesting reading is!

It was considered at the time a striking proof of virtue in the young king that he was sorry for his fathers death;but, as common subjects have that virtue too, sometimes, we will say no more about it.

I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most mens sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for.

What is he to learn? To imitate? Or to avoid? When your friends the bees worry themselves about their sovereign, and become perfectly distracted touching the slightest monarchical movement, are we men to learn the greatness of Tuft-hunting, or the littleness of the Court Circular? I am not clear, Mr. Boffin, but that the hive may be satirical.At all events, they work, said Mr. Boffin.Ye-es, returned Eugene, disparagingly, they work; but dont you think they overdo it?

...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. As to going a visiting, where can we not go, if we will; where have we not been, when we would; starting our fancy away from our Christmas Tree!