Dickens, Charles quotes
1812-1870 British NovelistCharity begins at home, and justice begins next door.
Dickens, Charles
Charity
He would make a lovely corpse.
Dickens, Charles
Death and Dying
Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers and are famous preservers of youthful looks.
Dickens, Charles
Cheerfulness
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
Dickens, Charles
Books - Reading
I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time...
Dickens, Charles
Concentration
Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.
Dickens, Charles
Debt
Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.
Dickens, Charles
Company
There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.
Dickens, Charles
Emotions
The whole difference between construction and creation is this; that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.
Dickens, Charles
Creativity
Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.
Dickens, Charles
Communication
I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.
Dickens, Charles
Bores and Boredom
I never see any difference in boys. I only know two sorts of boys. Mealy boys and beef-faced boys.
Dickens, Charles
Boys
Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
Dickens, Charles
Dress
The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.
Dickens, Charles
Endurance
Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.
Dickens, Charles
Business
I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness.
Dickens, Charles
Cheerfulness
A person who can t pay gets another person who can t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don t make either of them able to do a walking-match.
Dickens, Charles
Credit
Lord, keep my memory green.
Dickens, Charles
Memory
He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favor of two.
Dickens, Charles
Eyes
Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Dickens, Charles
Gratitude
Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances... in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.
Dickens, Charles
Family
The word of a gentleman is as good as his bond; and sometimes better.
Dickens, Charles
Gentlemen
Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.
Dickens, Charles
Home
Many merry Christmases, friendships, great accumulation of cheerful recollections, affection on earth, and Heaven at last for all of us.
Dickens, Charles
Friends and Friendship
Now, what I want is, facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!
Dickens, Charles
Facts
It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.
Dickens, Charles
Greatness
I do not know the American gentleman, God forgive me for putting two such words together.
Dickens, Charles
Gentlemen
If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
Dickens, Charles
Law and Lawyers
When you re a married man, Samivel, you ll understand a good many things as you don t understand now; but whether it s worth while, going through so much, to learn so little, as the charity-boy said when he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o taste.
Dickens, Charles
Marriage
There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.
Dickens, Charles
Hunting
Keep out of Chancery. It s being ground to bits in a slow mill; it s being roasted at a slow fire; it s being stung to death by single bees; it s being drowned by drops; it s going mad by grains.
Dickens, Charles
Law and Lawyers
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
Dickens, Charles
Love
I revere the memory of Mr. F. as an estimable man and most indulgent husband, only necessary to mention Asparagus and it appeared or to hint at any little delicate thing to drink and it came like magic in a pint bottle; it was not ecstasy but it was comfort.
Dickens, Charles
Husbands
With affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.
Dickens, Charles
Hypocrisy
Such is hope, heaven s own gift to struggling mortals, pervading, like some subtle essence from the skies, all things both good and bad.
Dickens, Charles
Hope
Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.
Dickens, Charles
Life and Living
Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.
Dickens, Charles
Life and Living
This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.
Dickens, Charles
Life and Living
They are so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a water-closet doormat.
Dickens, Charles
Newspapers
The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland, sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!
Dickens, Charles
Politicians and Politics
Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!
Dickens, Charles
Neurosis
Dollars! All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations seemed to be melted down into dollars. Whatever the chance contributions that fell into the slow cauldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick and slab with dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, measures were gauged by their dollars; life was auctioned, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars. The next respectable thing to dollars was any venture having their attainment for its end. The more of that worthless ballast, honor and fair-dealing, which any man cast overboard from the ship of his Good Nature and Good Intent, the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars. Make commerce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the nation for an idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by stripe as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars! What is a flag to them!
Dickens, Charles
Money
To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan and watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to the falling rain, and crouch for warmth beneath the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things -- but not so dismal as the wandering up and down where shelter is, and beds and sleepers are by thousands; a houseless rejected creature.
Dickens, Charles
Poverty and The Poor
Mind like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.
Dickens, Charles
Mind
Minds, like bodies, will fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.
Dickens, Charles
Mind
Philosophers are only men in armor after all.
Dickens, Charles
Philosophers and Philosophy
There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.
Dickens, Charles
Portraits
We know, Mr. Weller -- we, who are men of the world -- that a good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later.
Dickens, Charles
Uniforms
A man in public life expects to be sneered at -- it is the fault of his elevated situation, and not of himself.
Dickens, Charles
Public
I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomized our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me.
Dickens, Charles
Sarcasm
There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
Dickens, Charles
Truth
Regrets are the natural property of gray hairs.
Dickens, Charles
Regret
A lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper -- a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable.
Dickens, Charles
Temper
Minerva House was a finishing establishment for young ladies, where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.
Dickens, Charles
School
A day wasted on others is not wasted on one s self.
Dickens, Charles
Time and Time Management
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
Dickens, Charles
Secrets
It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.
Dickens, Charles
Cries and Crying
If its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body, they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists, at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.
Dickens, Charles
America
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
Dickens, Charles
Change
It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
Dickens, Charles
Babies
Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.
Dickens, Charles
Existence
Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you ve conquered human nature .
Dickens, Charles
Abstinence
Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.
Dickens, Charles
Alcohol and Alcoholism
Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance would seem to be the signal for instant confusion. 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.
Dickens, Charles
Change
Here s the rule for bargains: Do other men, for they would do you. That s the true business precept.
Dickens, Charles
Bargains
It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one s hand.
Dickens, Charles
Audiences
Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigor. With such people the gray head is but the impression of the old fellow s hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.
Dickens, Charles
Age and Aging
I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.
Dickens, Charles
Villains
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
Dickens, Charles
Worth
It s my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.
Dickens, Charles
Wives
Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!
Dickens, Charles
Vice
Take example by your father, my boy, and be very careful of vidders all your life, specially if they ve kept a public house, Sammy.
Dickens, Charles
Widowhood
A boy s story is the best that is ever told.
Dickens, Charles
Youth