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DICKENS, Charles Quotes
(1812-1870), English novelist
Mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily express itself. Its voice is low. It is modest and retiring, it lays in ambush and waits. Such is the mature fruit. Sometimes a life glides away, and finds it still ripening in the shade. The light inclinations of very young people are as dust compared to rocks.
Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many: not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Nature often enshrines gallant and noble hearts in weak bosoms; oftenest, God bless her, in woman's breast.
I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when they are scarcely more than infants.—It checks their confidence and simplicity, two of the best qualities that heaven gives them, and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments.
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.
Alas! how few of nature's faces there are to gladden us with their beauty!—The cares, and sorrows, and hungerings of the world change them, as they change hearts; and it is only when the passions sleep and have lost their hold forever that the troubled clouds pass off, and leave heaven's surface clear.—It is a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside into the long forgotten expression of infancy, and settle into the very look of early life.—So calm, so peaceful do they grow again, that those who knew them in their happy childhood, kneel by the coffin's side in awe, and see the angels even upon earth.
It will generally be found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.
I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face.—Don't trust that idea.—Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any clay in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.
There is no substitute for thoroughgoing, ardent, and sincere earnestness.
May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us? That we may forgive it.
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
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.
An idea, like a ghost, according to the common notion of ghosts, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
The first external revelations of the dry-rot in men is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than any; to do nothing tangible but to have an intention of performing a number of tangible duties tomorrow or the day after.
There are times when ignorance is bliss, indeed.
The old, old fashion—death! Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet—of immortality!
A good, contented, well-breakfasted juryman is a capital thing to get hold of. Discontented jurymen always find for the plaintiff.
There is no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.
"Let us be merry," said Mr. Pecksniff.
A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious existence, particularly in a large city. Where it comes from, or whither it goes, few men can tell. Assembling and dispersing with equal suddenness, it is as difficult to follow to its various sources as the sea itself; nor does the parallel stop here, for the ocean is not more fickle and uncertain, more terrible when roused, more unreasonable or more cruel.
I think it must somewhere be written, that the virtues of mothers shall be visited on their children, as well as the sins of the fathers.
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in connection with manner.
There is a Sunday conscience, as well as a Sunday coat; and those who make religion a secondary concern put the coat and conscience carefully by to put on only once a week.
The suspense—the fearful, acute suspense, of standing idly by while the life of one we dearly love is trembling in the balance; the racking thoughts that crowd upon the mind, and make the heart beat violently, and the breath come thick; the desperate anxiety "to be doing something" to relieve the pain or lessen the danger which we have no power to alleviate; and the sinking of soul which the sad sense of our helplessness produces,—what tortures can equal these, and what reflections or efforts can, in the full tide and fever of the time, allay them.
The sum of the whole is this: walk and be happy; walk and be healthy.—The best way to lengthen, out our days is to walk steadily and with a purpose. —The wandering man knows of certain ancients, far gone in years, who have staved off infirmities and dissolution by earnest walking—hale fellows, close upon ninety, but brisk as boys.
A wailing, rushing sound, which shook the walls as though a giant's hand were on them; then a hoarse roar, as if the sea had risen; then such a whirl and tumult that the air seemed mad; and then, with a lengthened howl, the waves of wind swept on.
"The world," is a conventional phrase, which being interpreted, signifies all the rascality in it.
What is meant by a "knowledge of the world" is simply an acquaintance with the infirmities of men.
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