CHARLES DICKENS QUOTES Quicklyfind - Quotes on just about anything!
(1812 - 1870) "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Source: A Tale of Two Cities "Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than the dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by religion." Source: '' A Christmas Carol (1843) I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. Introduction Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. 'Bah!' said Scrooge, 'Humbug!' 'Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.' 'Come, then,' returned the nephew gaily. 'What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.' 'It is required of every man,' the Ghost returned, 'that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world —oh, woe is me! —and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!' 'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!' 'There are some upon this earth of yours,' returned the Spirit,' who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.' Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die. It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God. to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.' 'Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,' said Scrooge. 'But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me.' I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. …as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One! Full text of A Christmas Carol at Wikisource.
"It is a hopeless endeavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in." "...young men not being as a class remarkable for modesty or self-denial, especially when there is a lady in the case, when, if they colour at all, it is rather their practise to colour the story, and not themselves." "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." "There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets." "When men are about to commit, or sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable." "Look to yourself, and heed this warning that I give you! Your day is past, and night is coming on--" Attributed "A loving heart is the truest wisdom." "Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true." "Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire." Source: Pickwick Papers "No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else." "The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you." "The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again." "Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort." See: list of people by name