Charles Dickens

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

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

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.

There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulty of my life... I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a vagabond.

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows - and china.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.

Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.

A boy's story is the best that is ever told.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.

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.

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.

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

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.

He would make a lovely corpse.

We are so very 'umble.

He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused - in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened - by the recurrence of Christmas.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

'Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that.

'Do you spell it with a 'V' or a 'W'?' inquired the judge. 'That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord'.

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.

There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.

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.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

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.

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.