Charles Dickens Quotes

Charles John Huffam Dickens

Charles Dickens was an English novelist and social critic who created some of the world’s best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. (Charles Dickens Quotes)

“A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once won, goes through fire and water for the winner, and never changes, and is never daunted.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“A horse is a quadruped, and quadruped’s latin for beast, as everybody that’s gone through grammar knows, or else what’s the use in having grammars at all?”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“A howling corner in the winter time, a dusty corner in the summer time, an undesirable corner at the best of times.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“A word in earnest is as good as a speech.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“All this time the creature on the other side—whether it was in the shape of man, or beast, he neither knew nor sought to know—was gaining on them.”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place, bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“And this is the eternal law. For, Evil often stops short at itself and dies with the doer of it! but Good, never.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“And yet I love him. I love him so much and so dearly, that when I sometimes think my life may be but a weary one, I am proud of it and glad of it. I am proud and glad to suffer something for him, even though it is of no service to him, and he will never know of it or care for it.” (Charles Dickens Quotes)
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“As all partings foreshadow the great final one, – so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper what your room and what mine must one day be.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“But, in this separation I associate you only with the good and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you have done far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away.”
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers

“Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“Death has no right to leave him standing, and to mow me down!”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over? Because, if it is to spite her, I should think – but you know best – that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think – but you know best – she was not worth gaining over.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“Don’t be afraid! We won’t make an author of you, while there’s an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“Everything that Mr Smallweed’s grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It’s so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal.”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!”
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers

“He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever did,” replied the girl, shaking her head. “He is an earnest man when his hatred is up. I know many who do worse things; but I’d rather listen to them all a dozen times, than to that Monks once.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before-more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.” (Charles Dickens Quotes)
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“How could he ever go to America! Why didn’t he go to some of those countries where the savages eat each other fairly, and give an equal chance to every one!”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“I am what you designed me to be. I am your blade. You cannot now complain if you also feel the hurt.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“I find the nights long, for I sleep but little, and think much.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“I have broken where I should have bent; and have mused and brooded, when my spirit should have mixed with all God’s great creation. The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother. I have turned from the world, and I pay the penalty.”
Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge

“I hope I know my own unworthiness, and that I hate and despise myself and all my fellow-creatures as every practicable Christian should.”
Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge

“I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“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.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“I never had one hour’s happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“I verily believe that her not remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly – and that is the sharpest crying of all.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“If a man would commit an inexpiable offence against any society, large or small, let him be successful. They will forgive any crime except that.”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“I’ll tell you,” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, “what real love it. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter – as I did!.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“Indeed this gentleman’s stoicism was of that not uncommon kind, which enables a man to bear with exemplary fortitude the afflictions of his friends, but renders him, by way of counterpoise, rather selfish and sensitive in respect of any that happen to befall himself.”
Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge

“Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never have had it?”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“It is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“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.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“It is one of the easiest achievements in life to offend your family when your family want to get rid of you.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art.”
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers

“It is the fate of most men who mingle with the world, and attain even the prime of life, to make many real friends, and lose them in the course of nature. It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the full extent of their misfortunes; for they are required to furnish an account of them besides.”
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“It’s always something, to know you’ve done the most you could. But, don’t leave off hoping, or it’s of no use doing anything. Hope, hope to the last!”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“Let no man turn aside, even so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means. Those that cannot, are bad; and may be counted so at once, and left alone.”
Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge

“Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred. A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment. Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.” (Charles Dickens Quotes)
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“Life is made of so many partings welded together”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“Make the most of it while it lasts. Get in your hay while the sun shines. Take your own way as long as it’s in your power, my lady!”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“Man is but mortal; and there is a point beyond which human courage cannot extend.”
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers

“Mankind is evil in its thoughts and in its base constructions.”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“Many a gentleman lives well upon a soft head, who would find a heart of the same quality a very great drawback.”
Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge

“Most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures, hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“My meaning is, that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“No one is useless in this world,’ retorted the Secretary, ‘who lightens the burden of it for any one else.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“No varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“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. ”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“One new mound was there which had not been there last night. Time, burrowing like a mole below the ground, had marked his track by throwing up another heap of earth. And that was all.”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“Persons don’t make their own faces, and it’s no more my fault if mine is a good one than it is other people’s fault if theirs is a bad one.”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.”
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers

“Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues — faith and hope.”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“She had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very good.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“She never went out herself, and like a great many other old ladies of the same stamp, she was apt to consider it an act of domestic treason, if anybody else took the liberty of doing what she couldn’t.”
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers

“She touched his organ, and from that bright epoch even it, the old companion of his happiest hours, incapable as he had thought of elevation, began a new and deified existence.”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“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.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“Some people are nobody’s enemies but their own.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“Such is hope, Heaven’s own gift to struggling mortals; pervading, like some subtle essence from the skies, all things, both good and bad; as universal as death, and more infectious than disease!”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.” (Charles Dickens Quotes)
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“Sudden shifts and changes are no bad preparation for political life.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration,—a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence; and for some time he lay gasping on a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world and the next: the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“The latter considerations were only second to his avarice; for, conscious that there was nothing in his person, conduct, character, or accomplishments, to command respect, he was greedy of power, and was, in his heart, as much a tyrant as any laureled conqueror on record.”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“The morning came, and they would start at noon. Noon came, and they would start at night. But nothing is eternal in this world; not even the procrastination of an American skipper; and at night all was ready.”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“The night air ain’t quite wholesome, I suppose?’ said Mark. ‘It’s deadly poison,’ was the settler’s answer.”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up for ever on my best affections. Deep affliction has only made them stronger; it ought, I think, for it should refine our nature.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“The secret was such an old one now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not tear it away.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“The shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.”
Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge

“The simple fact was, that Oliver, instead of possessing too little feeling, possessed rather too much, and was in a fair way of being reduced to a state of brutal stupidity and sullenness for life, by the ill usage he had received.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“The universe makes rather an indifferent parent, I’m afraid.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. 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. Once for all; 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.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“The worm does not his work more surely on the dead body, than does this slow creeping fire upon the living frame.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“There are very few moments in a man’s existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat. (Charles Dickens Quotes)
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers

“There is something indefinably keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in ill humor and near knives.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“There is sometimes an odd disposition in this country to dispute as improbable in fiction, what are the commonest experiences in fact.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“There was a curious mixture in the boy, of uncompleted savagery, and uncompleted civilization.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“There were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.”
Charles Dickens
Bleak House

“Thus two people who cannot afford to play cards for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game for love.”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“Time has been lost and opportunity thrown away, but I am yet a young man, and may retrieve it.”
Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge

“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 fr 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 the thousands; a houseless rejected creature.”
Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge

“To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible.”
Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge

“We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“We hear sometimes of an action for damages against the unqualified medical practitioner, who has deformed a broken limb in pretending to heal it. But, what of the hundreds of thousands of minds that have been deformed for ever by the incapable pettifoggers who have pretended to form them!”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“We must leave the discovery of this mystery, like all others, to time, and accident, and Heaven’s pleasure.”
Charles Dickens
Barnaby Rudge

“We need never be ashamed of our tears.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“We spent as much money as we could and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“We were equals afterwards, as we had been before; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking about him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“What is substantially true of families in this respect, is true of a whole commonwealth.”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.”
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers

“When I speak of home, I speak of the place where in default of a better–those I love are gathered together; and if that place where a gypsy’s tent, or a barn, I should call it by the same good name notwithstanding.”
Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby

“Which matchless wonders, coming fast on Mr Pinch’s mind, did so rub up and chafe that wonderful lamp within him, that when he turned his face towards the busy street, a crowd of phantoms waited on his pleasure, and he lived again, with new delight.”
Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit

“Wish me everything that you can wish for the woman you dearly love, and I have as good as got it, John. I have better than got it, John.”
Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens

“Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it’s blowing up; and then they lengthens it out.”
Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist

“You are in every line I have ever read.”
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations

“You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since-on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with.” (Charles Dickens Quotes)
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations